InDesign Crashes TFO With Hyperlinks in Footnotes And I'm Going Crazy

Forum|Forum|30 days ago
June 3, 2026
1 reply
66 views

Since the version 20, InDesign has been struggling to deal with hyperlinks in the footnotes, which leads the app to crash.

This topic is related here since the 2019 CC and it doesn’t get resolved.

It's been challenging to get work done with these kinds of problems. I’ve already reinstaled InDesign, disabled Windows Updates and One Drive, deleted preferences, and none of that seems to work.

Please, can someone give me a hint on how to deal with it?

larson096vikky

Participant

Hello,

Does the issue persist across all InDesign 20.x versions, or is it tied to a specific update?

tales_2945Author

Participant

It persists in all versions. I was using the latest, but the support told me to install an older version and try. It worked for new documents, but my work file is now corrupted.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @tales_2945,

Apologies for the delayed response, and I'm sorry to hear you're still facing this issue. Since the behavior persists across InDesign 20.x versions and seems to affect a specific document, the file may have become corrupted. Could you please export the document to IDML (File > Export > InDesign Markup (IDML)), open the IDML file, resave it as a new INDD, and test the issue again? If the problem continues, try splitting the document into smaller sections to identify whether a particular footnote or hyperlink is causing the crash. Also, if the file is stored in OneDrive, SharePoint, or another synced location, please use File > Package and test from a local drive instead.

For reference: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/troubleshoot-file-issues.html

Additionally, I searched for crash reports associated with your community email address but could not find any. Could you please confirm whether the Adobe Crash Reporter appears when InDesign crashes and, if so, submit the report? You can also share your Adobe email address with me via DM so I can check the logs. More information can be found here: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/submit-crash-reports.html

Also, please test the issue in InDesign 20.4.1 (the latest version) and let us know if the behavior persists. Any details on whether the crash occurs when opening, editing, or exporting documents containing footnote hyperlinks would help us investigate further.

Thanks,
Abhishek

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