Indesign desktop version and a database

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
May 22, 2026
3 replies
284 views

We (a team of 11 people) are using INDD 2026 desktop version and are working directly from a wind 2025 server. What we are looking for: which kind of database works quite well with INDD and would be best for storing some 10,000 or more INDD files. The final goal is to start working locally and using the server for what it’s build for, storing things.

D

Dirk Becker

Legend

A few decades ago your “database” based system would have been called Editorial system. File locking, versioning, check-out and check-in, workflow task support. Nowadays these systems have often switched focus to generic “DAM” (mostly meaning HTML based plus heavy image storage) but still keep InDesign as a side track if you insist. Others have disappeared. Beyond DAM, watch out for “Corporate Publishing” or more specialised - e.g. “Catalog Publishing”.

There are still plenty vendors, look around either in your geography, ask the AI of your choice or try the really big international ones. Just combine one of the keywords above with “InDesign”. I’m not sure about typical price tags at your small team size - maybe something “cloud” instead of an on-premise database?

On the other hand those might be far too sophisticated. I guess we’ll also see some posts suggesting Dropbox, OneDrive and alike instead of pure SMB shares that are currently giving you trouble.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Are you saying your team is using InDesign that is running on a server?

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

leo.r

Community Expert

I think you’ll need to clarify better what you mean by “database” in this context and how this would allow you to start working locally.

If you work locally, then your files are on your local drive and not on the server. It also means that those files are not accessible from the network by other team members. And vice versa.

Maybe I misunderstand what you’re referring to.

gert verreptAuthor

Inspiring

We all have a desktop with INDD 2026. All are docs are stored on a Wind server. Upto now, we didn’t have any problems opening and working directly on the server. With INDD 2026 all is getting very slow and sometimes INDD just stops working (no crash, just stops reacting). So we we’re thinking of copying the files we work on to our pc, then do our thing and save again to the server. So some of us we’re thinking about using sharepoint, or any other DMS, to acces the files and see if 1. we can copy them locally and lock them from the DMS and 2. getting them back into the DMS. One way or another we have to find a solution for storing the files on the server, copying and locking them, and getting them back on the server, all this with as less as possible manual labour. Completely scripting is a solution, but maybe we can do even better with a DMS and scripting.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

One solution is to back down to the previous version for now. Then keep testing 2026.

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

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