InDesign CC 9.2 - New Hyperlinks panel - Unresponsive, Slow, Crash

Hi All,

I apologise for the inconvenience that you all are facing. This is indeed a bad experience and we are working on improving the experience. The problem is not yet resolved though.

Let me elaborate on the issue a little more:

1. By default when we create a new Hyperlink the new Hyperlink created points to a Shared Hyperlink Destination. A shared destination is like a variable holding address to which the Hyperlink finally points to. So the structure is like Hyperlink --->> Hyperlink Destination -->> Hyperlink address (the URL, email address etc).
2. Some actions, such as copy and paste copy only the Hyperlink but NOT the Hyperlink destination to the new document, so what happens is that the destination exists in the older document and the Hyperlink itself exists in the newer document.
3. This problem existed before the Hyperlink Panel changes but got exposed due to the new changes made to improve the Hyperlink experience.
4. What happens is, to check the status of the Hyperlinks whether they still are valid or not InDesign needs to check the Hyperlink destination to get the actual Hyperlink URL\File\Email etc so it needs to open that document where the Hyperlink Destination resides and it is this opening and closing of the documents that causes the performance lag (the file opening action happens in the background hence you may not see it).

How can we avoid it (till the bug gets fixed):

Have the Hyperlinks point to destinations that exist in the same document or do not use the Hyperlink Destination altogether and make all the Hyperlinks un-shared such that they directly point to the URL.

If there are only a few hyperlinks concerned this may be an easy task but in cases where there are many this is a problematic task.

I have made a script that does the same for you. the script loops across all the Hyperlinks and for each hyperlink first checks whether its destination exists in a different document, if so it saves all attributes of the Hyperlink (its destination, style etc) and re-creates the hyperlink, now pointing to the URL directly rather then via Hyperlink Destination. Please note that this works only for Hyperlinks that are of URL type.

Please do take a back-up of the document and first try out the script and once you find things to be fine then only move on to it.

curDoc = app.activeDocument


allHyperlinks = curDoc.hyperlinks
var counter = 0


for(i=0;i<allHyperlinks.length; i++)
{
    theHyperlink = allHyperlinks

    try
    {
  if(theHyperlink.destination.parent.name != curDoc.name)
  {
  //storing the properties of the Hyperlinks
  src = theHyperlink.source;  
  dest = theHyperlink.destination;  
  name = theHyperlink.name;
  borderStyle = theHyperlink.borderStyle;
  bdrColor = theHyperlink.borderColor;
  bdrhighight = theHyperlink.highlight;
  bdrWidth = theHyperlink.width;
  bdrVisible = theHyperlink.visible;
  srcText = src.sourceText;  
  srcStyle = src.appliedCharacterStyle;
  destURL = dest.destinationURL;  
  destHidden = dest.hidden;  
  destName = dest.name +  Math.random().toString();  

  //removing the hyperlink
  theHyperlink.remove();

  //Creating the new hyperlink
  dest = curDoc.hyperlinkURLDestinations.add( destURL, {name: destName || Math.random().toString(), hidden: true} );  
  src.remove(); 
  src = curDoc.hyperlinkTextSources.add (srcText);  

  //applying the properties to the newly created hyperlink
  theHyperlink = curDoc.hyperlinks.add(src, dest);  
  theHyperlink.name = name;
  theHyperlink.borderStyle = borderStyle;
  theHyperlink.borderColor = bdrColor;
  theHyperlink.highlight = bdrhighight ;
  theHyperlink.width = bdrWidth;
  src.appliedCharacterStyle = srcStyle;
  theHyperlink.visible = bdrVisible;
  counter++;
  }
  }
  catch(e)
  {}
}


alert ("changed " + counter + " hyperlinks and made them point to non-shared destinations")

Okay, sorry, didn't see the link to the patch, it works now - thank you Adobe.

InDesign CC 2017 crashes on macOS

Hello Javed,

One thing that did work was to delete all hyperlinks (used and unused) and run the "Convert URLs to Hyperlinks" command. That seemed to clear up the bug. So it seems that it was an error introduced with an imported URL that cleared up when I deleted all.

Kevin Bruce

Founding Partner - Chief Design Officer

Musketeers.me

http://musketeers.me

Twitter: @kevinbruce

Yes, I am running CC 2014 9.2.2...

I had no problems with the identical files with the previous (non-cloud) version of InDesign.  I rebooted my computer, tried to load that one chapter, and at this point it will take hours, if it loads at all.  It appears to be checking each link--so far I have three greens, but two reds to my external hyperlinks.  I'd place a bet that the reds aren't really reds, that it is an issue with InDesign.  I have another chapter with about two-thirds of the hyperlinks, it "crawls" but it does work.  One other chapter approximates the one that has the problem, but it runs fine.  The other 48, each with 50-100 hyperlinks, work as expected.

This is the first time I've had (major) problems with an Adobe product.  Would it help the cause if I open a service ticket with Adobe, or is this already under review?  Thanks...