Indesign properties panel - causes delay/lockups

Forum|Forum|3 days ago
July 9, 2026
3 replies
36 views

The properties panel, when on and open, creates freezing trouble when working on older files not created with the current version of Indesign I’m using. It’s a significant freeze/delay when clicking between text and image containers and text or select tools. Even having the type tool open, things like highlighting a word can fail. I might get 3 letters out of a 4 letter word highlighted before it freezes. Selecting two image boxes and a text box might lock it up for 2 to 8 seconds. Or it may just skip one of four items I tried to select, such as the third item because it was in the middle of a freeze while I was clicking that one. etc...

This very specifically was detailed by another user 7 years ago and the topic was closed stating version 14 had fixed this issue. But here I am dealing with it today on the newest version creative cloud has me updated to. 21.4.1

Here is the previous topic from 7 years back.

That describes what I see happening and it’s frustrating to no end, and it seems to snowball the longer you keep trying to work with the doc, be it a one pager or a 50 page doc. I've idml’d the file, I’ve packaged it to desktop to reopen there. I’ve replaced all text boxes and fonts. I’ve reset prefs and I’ve turned so many items off in prefs trying to find this.

Solved for me: Using gemini ai to help troubleshoot, we narrowed it down to one reproduceable item and that is having the properties panel open or closed. As soon as I shut down the properties panel, the issue is gone.

I can use the top control bar now for most things and if something specific is needed or useful in properties panel then I will open it, use it, then turn that nasty thing back off. that will have to be my standard now. It seems like switching contents propogated into the panel based on what you have selected or what tools are selected is too much for my windows 11 machine, and or maybe there is something wrong in the programming of the properties box. As mentioned, if you keep trying to work in a file doing this with that panel open it seems to get worse with more and longer delays the longer I try.

Just passing this on for anyone that happens into this issue again. I have no idea where to post bugs for Indesign anymore so here is where this lives for now.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

One thing I notice in your temptest.indd file: all the paragraphs have a paragraph style to control them. But they all seem to have a character style defaulted on and also applied to them. The character styles are also overly-attributed. They should only be supplying 1 or a few attributes that are different from what is already in the paragraph style (which is the main workhorse). IOW, the character style should generally be defaulted to None, unless you are explicitly calling for something bold or italic or whatever. Also, I recommend the Object Style be set to None unless being purposely used.

Mike Witherell

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Problems with panels can often be fixed by deleting your InDesign cache files. This is not the same process as deleting preferences. It is specifically for interface issues.

To delete cache files:

For Macintosh Users: The User Library folder in which InDesign’s cache files are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that InDesign is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N). With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the “Caches” folder. Within the Caches folder find and delete the entire folder “Adobe InDesign”. I find that deleting the InDesign cache folder completely leads to a lasting change.

For Windows Users: The caches files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign\Version [#]\<Language>\Cache.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @metallums18

I’m sorry to hear about your experience with InDesign. Would you mind trying the suggestions shared in this community post (https://community.adobe.com/questions-671/reset-indesign-preferences-and-other-troubleshooting-867226) and letting us know if they help?

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

M

metallums18Author

Inspiring

Well, that’s certainly a kitchen sink of try this. Amazingly breezing through that quickly I see a good 20-25 of those I’ve tried for this issue just today or on other items since the new year. Certainly dumping preferences was tried and other items I mentioned above or didn’t, such as turning off features like type contextual controls and making sure live preflight is off, etc.

My lengthy report above may have been too much to read or not enough, but I went through the normal ones and then more when AI laid out some final additional steps to try probably right out of your linked list. But what it came down to was shutting off that newer kitchen sink properties panel. End of story that completely seems to have fixed my freezing/lockups or the symptoms of it at least.

I’ve run into this nasty problems a few times in the spring for last minute requests on small proposals where in March we’ve reused a base proposal file that was new in February as a base starter file to save time, but ran into this freeze lockup issue until your hair stars falling out and you just start a new file. It wasn’t until yesterday and today that I’ve found these files can still be utilized and this issue can be taken off the table by just giving up that properties panel always being open. It really just seems to not be efficient in loading and offloading settings data or something and I’m wondering if older files never release some of that properties panel data or something related to that gets corrupted in files over time. I don’t want to guess, I really have no clue about such things. But it also really kinds of stinks when our first suggested idea for getting around issues is always to dump those prefs and turn everything useful off. So, I shared one thing that worked for me in case it helps someone else go directly to that. Try closing that panel.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi metallums,

Your description suggests the possibility of a #3-style reset that focuses on deleting the cache files so that InDesign can rebuild them on startup.

Mike Witherell

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.