InDesign freezes when placing/updating placed files. Help

Community Expert

Are Generative AI options enabled in Preferences?

Ronj

Participant

thanks for the tip, to turn it off its just the 2 check boxes on the bottom panel of preferences right ?

Known Participant

Issue is worse now. InDesign 21.1 will try to load, show the About/loading screen and then beep once and close. The app doesn’t even open fully now.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

You should patch to 21.3 and retest with Gen AI prefs switched off. Also, placing InDesign documents into InDesign is having a bug lately.

Mike Witherell

TrishJar

Participant

I am having this exact same problem and it is really getting ANNOYING!!!!!

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Trish,

Can you expand on details about what you are experiencing? Version? OS? Exact moments and steps? You might want to start a new question thread, too, instead of mixing into this one.

Mike Witherell

Known Participant

After more digging, I found an Adobe process that is suspended. "Adobe Notification Client". Googling this suggests that it may have something to do with licenses? I also saw that in the past this suspended task would cause an older InDesign (16.2.1) to hang. So I’m guessing this may be the issue. I am a fully paid and subscribed customer. Would anyone know how to fix this issue?

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @The Parabolica,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I wanted to check if you’re still experiencing this issue or if things are working fine now.

If the problem is still occurring, could you please try a couple of quick checks? Open Window > Utilities > Background Tasks and keep that panel visible while placing a file. If you notice anything getting stuck there, it will help confirm that the freeze is tied to a background operation. Also, please sign out of the Creative Cloud Desktop app, quit all Adobe processes from Task Manager, then relaunch and sign back in and see if that helps.

Additionally, try creating a brand-new document and place a simple image like a PNG or JPG to check if this is specific to a document or an environment specific issue.

If possible, please share a short screen recording showing the issue in action so I can review this further with the team.

Let me know how it goes.

Abhishek

S

SC King

Participant

I followed these instructions and I haven’t gotten the endless spinning cursor since logging back in and re-opening InDesign. I’ve placed several files from my local drive.

Known Participant

I uninstalled 21.3 and installed 21.1 and it’s working fine thankfully. I still would like Adobe to figure it out. The whole project pipeline slams to a halt when InDesign isn’t working!

Community Expert

I uninstalled 21.3 and installed 21.1 and it’s working fine thankfully.

Then I wonder if your issue has something to do with the new Generative AI preferences.

Some users reported suspicions that these options caused issues upon placing images.

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Are you using any third-party plug-ins with your InDesign? If so try disabling them and see if the problem persists.

Known Participant

No. I’m not. But that’s a good question.

Known Participant

One last item...I am not able to close InDesign once the cursor starts “spinning” after placing a file. And an alert comes up that says it can’t close because there is a background process going on. Does that help anyone figure out what may be causing the issue?

Community Expert

Keep the Background Tasks panel open. Maybe it will show something suspicious there. Also, can you post a screenshot of that alert?

Known Participant

Also, I have not had any problems placing files from a network drive or anywhere for over 3 years. But all of a sudden I’m having issues the last month or two.

Community Expert

> The files I use are typically on my Google Drive

Does it happen with files on your local drive?