Inspiring

Question

Indesign properties panel - causes delay/lockups

Forum|Forum|27 days ago
July 9, 2026
10 replies
72 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.

M

metallums18Author

Inspiring

For anyone happening along this help request, it apparently wasn’t just Properties panel related. It is starting to look like that was just a symptom of other problems.

One of those problems of which is default object styles that were sticking to objects be default with attributes I never selected and even though Prefs/caches had been cleared. Best state I’ve reached so far is a new clean workspace and setting things up to default with no object style attributes before opening any file. Unknown if this solves this or if it’s just another symptom at the moment. But I’ve got working properties panel again on this file for now.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @metallums18,

Thanks for the update and for sharing your latest findings. I'm glad to hear you've been able to improve the behavior by creating a new workspace and resetting the default Object Style attributes.

I also downloaded and tested the file you shared on my end, but I wasn't able to reproduce the delays or freezes. To help us better understand what's happening, could you please share a screen recording demonstrating the workflow until the issue occurs? Additionally, please let us know your system specifications, including your CPU, RAM, GPU, and whether you're using a single or multiple monitor setup. It would also be helpful if you could confirm whether the issue still occurs with a brand-new document created in 21.4.1 or only with existing/older documents. If possible, please also test the same workflow in InDesign 21.3 (or another previous version) and let us know if the behavior changes. Finally, please try running InDesign as Administrator and disabling the Generative AI options under Preferences > Generative AI, then let us know whether either of these changes has any effect.

Looking forward to your update so we can continue investigating this further.

Abhishek

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

M

metallums18Author

Inspiring

Thank you Mike. I’ll have to strip some of that out of these files as defaults. Character styles for these were used more than paragraph files, and we do use multiple different styles for these for quick formatting. But as you said maybe they are overly-attributed and I can reduce that or reverse to use paragraph styles more instead. Maybe some of the items you noticed can make a difference, although I have coworkers that aren’t having trouble with same files at the moment.

Object style I’m more confused over. I’m not setting up an object style almost ever. But I’ve seen it become a default before. However with dumping prefs and caches, and uninstalling/reinstalling multiple times lately I would assume anything defaulting would stop. Maybe I’m wrong on that too.

One question I have for you is did you notice any serious delays or lockups when simply trying to highlight or select different items in the file? You would definitely notice if it was occurring for you as well opening that file. The delays are really something.

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

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