InDesign - need a "Fix my Corrupted File" Upload Service

Please do send the file. As I mentioned to Casey, it's rarely possible to repair a truly corrupt document, but we definitely want to see any document that causes a crash so we can isolate the root cause and address if for a future release.

Thanks,
- Zak

zak@adobe.com

P.S. If you send the file as an e-mail attachment, you'll need to remove the .zip file extension in order to get through Adobe's e-mail filters.

October 18 2007 must be InDesign file crash and cry day (and I didn't even see it on the calendar!) I have logged probably 6 hours, and used favors with as many InDesign designers trying to recover one file. It's a 180-page doc for the UN, and the loss of time to simply use the most recent backup is about 10 work hours, so I'm hesitant to have my artist just reconstruct. Zak, if your offer to Carey still stands, then I will email you a link to the file in about 14.7 seconds!!!

SYZYGY Media

PS: Ironically the file is on landmines!

Casey, please send me any corrupt files you have along with a brief explanation of what steps are required to reproduce the crash or other incorrect behavior so our QA can reproduce the problem and get a bug report into the system. (If the files are sent as .zip attachments, youll need to remove the file extension in order to get the files through Adobes e-mail filters. If theyre too big for e-mail, you could post them somewhere for me to download or you can contact me for ftp upload information.)

If the documents are fundamentally corrupt in some way, theres no way to repair them. However, anytime a user encounters a document or set of actions that result in a crash, wed very much appreciate receiving a copy of the file (packaged if possible) and an explanation of the steps necessary to reproduce the crash.

As others have already expressed, the instability youve described is not the norm. As a first step, I recommend removing all third party plug-ins.

If you crash please submit the crash log. When on the Macintosh, please include your e-mail address. If you submit a crash log with an e-mail address I may be able to determine the general source of the crash (i.e. a corrupt graphic, a bad font, a suspect third party plug-in, a bug in the core code of InDesign, etc.).

Thank you,
- Zak

Zak Williamson
Chief Architect
InDesign Product Family
Adobe Systems, Inc.
zak@adobe.com

markzware offers the service to upload files which do not work with their products - for examination.

a few more searches of the "Indesign Mac" forum:

"Cannot open the file" - 276 instances
"INX" - 500 instances (commonly used for corrupted files)

With a damaged files service, people will send in badly emailed files, only the half of files, and files internally damaged by HD crashes or malware activity.

And if they have to pay for it, they'll want their originals back no matter what!

I'll keep my eyes open for any new job requests at Adobe -- and if these appear, I'll be sure *not* to react :-)

casey,

What happens if you disable those plugins? I don't know "Font X" unless you mean Linotype "FontExplorer X," but auto-activation modules particularly in Suitcase, are well-known to cause crashing problems.

Harbs,

How much is a fair price? This service would be swamped by files that could be corrected by export to .inx or other known techniques. Is Adobe's time worth less than ours?

Peter

I just completed another issue of the magazine and printed out all of the individual articles. I sent the PDFs to the printer and all was good (after recovering from a few corrupt files). (21 INDD files organized in a book)

Now it is done so I went to 'package' the book so I can archive it - but every time I try to package it, it fails (InDesign crashes) on one of the articles (which was fine up until that point.) Again...

I limit my font usage to very few fonts (Formata, Myriad Pro) and I have run Font Doctor to clean up any suspects. I only link to PSD files (no EPS, no JPEG, no TIFF, no PDF, no INDD, no Word or Excel). For each issue I run pre-flight to make sure no fonts have crept in.

My system has NO STABILITY OR PERFORMANCE ISSUES - NONE (Dual 1.8 Ghz OS X 10.4.10) -not in Photoshop, not in MS Office, not in Dreamweaver, not in Flash, no disk issues, nowhere else on the system - except in InDesign - which consistently crashes and corrupts files at critical times. No other app has corrupted a file. Some apps have crashed of course, but not with the frequency of InDesign.

I use two plug-ins Teacup (Type fitter) and Font X.

As of a hour ago I have another corrupt file for the InDesign team to investigate once they turn on the "Fix my Corrupt File" service.

(note - don't send any responses telling me to delete and restore my preferences - or to repair disk permissions....)

As for the "norm" - I did a quick search of the forums (Indesign MAC only)

crash - 590 occurrences (dups will occur)
corrupt - 202
"unable to open" - 106

Casey

CS3 - InDesign 5.0.1 (thanks for finally fixing the TOC alpha-sort bug that broke TOC in 5.0.0)

I've made my living working with InDesign since version two came out. I might, in that time, have had two un-recoverable files, but I'm only sure of one. If you have "stacks" of them you either have a lot of bad fonts, bad images, or bad drivers.

Peter

<<<<Or are you suggesting there are secrets? >>>

When people report files that cannot be opened, or files that keep crashing Indesign when they try to open them (we all have stacks of them) - then an engineer could step thru opening of the file and find out what the root cause is - and either solve the problem - or put in safeguards that prevent the scenario - or at least prevent the symptom from causing lost work or crashing of InDesign.

Hopefully the files would get fixed and returned... and Indesign would get more and more robust over time.

Casey

While I'm inclined to want to support this as a request, how practical is it really?

Most of the techniques for file recovery have pretty good coverage here on the forums (perhaps a FAQ would be in order, if anyone would actually read it) and files corrupted beyond what those techniques can repair are, I would guess, most likely unrecoverable, even by engineers at Adobe.

Or are you suggesting there are secrets?

Peter