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oooreri
Participant
April 29, 2026
Question

Indesign 21.3 keeps crashing when exporting PDF, but only around mid-file

  • April 29, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 98 views

I’m working on a book, 288 pages. Plenty of images, all .eps files as I’m working with spot colours for risograph printing. I’ve been working with this set up for years and I never had this issue. When I try to export the file, the app crashes, and as it took some 30 seconds before the crash I thought that the file was too heavy for my machine (Apple Silicon M1, 2021, 16BG running Tahoe 26.2 with >1TB memory available). So I started splitting the export in smaller parts. It all went ok for pages 1-49 and pages 50-99, but when I went to export pages 100-149 the app crashes, sometimes immediately, sometimes after some 10-20 seconds of exporting. I found it consistent with the first export attempts of the whole file, which occurred after some 30 seconds—maybe some file is corrupted around mid book and if I skip that batch and proceed to export pages 150-199 I might be able to isolate the error and keep exporting the book. But the same occurs to this new export attempt. Sometimes, after the app crashed, a dialogue box with some text and what seems to be the reason for the error (red text) flashes on the screen, but it’s literally 1/10 of a second, so no chance to get any info from it.

Anyone has any idea on how to proceed? I tried to update the app to its latest version and now I’m uninstalling it an reinstalling it. I’m also planning on downloading the shole package to another Mac and try to do it from there.

2 replies

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Community Manager
April 30, 2026
 

Hi ​@oooreri,

 

Thanks for reaching out and sorry to hear you’re running into this.

I checked for any submitted crash reports linked to your community email but couldn’t find any. If you see the Adobe crash reporter after the crash, could you please submit the report and either use your community email address or share the email used via DM so I can track the logs on my end. You can also refer to this guide for submitting crash reports: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/submit-crash-reports.html

Also, adding to the expert’s suggestion, please try the steps mentioned here to isolate any file-related issues: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/troubleshoot-file-issues.html. Along with that, please try exporting the file to IDML, reopen the IDML file, and then export the PDF again to see if that resolves the issue.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you. 

Abhishek

  

Dave Creamer of IDEAS
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 29, 2026

Are you watching the background process panel to (possibly) see what is hanging up?
Also, try disabling the background process.

Finally, trying breaking down pages 100-149 in half. Export each half. 
If one fails, break that section in half.
Continue breaking sections in half until problem is pinpointed. 

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)