InDesign Share for Review Link Fails to Update and Mobile Viewer Issues

Question

I’m experiencing two ongoing issues with InDesign’s Review feature that have been consistently reproducible for the past three months.

Issue 1: Review links fail to update on larger documents

When uploading a publication for review, I can no longer update the existing review link. A persistent error appears stating:

“There was a problem updating the artefact.”

This workflow functioned reliably until approximately three months ago. To rule out local issues, I tested the same document and process on a second machine, with identical results.

Through testing, I’ve found that if I halve the document size (testing both the first 30 pages and the last 30 pages independently to rule out a problematic element), the review link does update successfully. This suggests the issue is related to document scale rather than specific assets.

The publications I work on are graphically intensive magazines, typically around 2.5GB in total size. Images are linked, not embedded, with many PSD files used throughout.

Tests were performed on:

MacBook M1 (8GB RAM)
MacBook M4 (16GB RAM)

Both running the latest versions of macOS and all Adobe software.

Issue 2: Mobile review viewer is no longer functional

Around the same time the update failures began, the mobile review experience also degraded:

Pinch-to-zoom and page navigation no longer work reliably on mobile browsers.
On iPhones specifically, the page navigator at the bottom does not consistently update the page being viewed when tapped.

This is a significant regression, as many of our writers rely on mobile review to proof and annotate their work. Both of these issues have added considerable time and friction to a workflow that was functioning well 3–4 months ago. I would appreciate any assistance in identifying the cause and resolving them.

Appreciate any assistance in solving these problems.

Abhishek Rao · Accepted Answer

Hi ​@chrischav14574321,Thanks for your continued patience and for sharing all the detailed findings here. I understand how disruptive this has been, especially when it affects your review workflow.I wanted to share an update that the issue related to "There was an error updating the artifact" for larger or more complex documents was fixed in the InDesign 21.4 build. The good news is that InDesign 21.4 is now generally available, so could you please confirm whether you are already on v21.4?If not, please update InDesign to the latest version through the Creative Cloud Desktop app and test the Share for Review update workflow again. This will help confirm whether the fix resolves the issue in your case.Once updated, please share your observations. If you still notice the issue, let me know along with your document details, and I'll take it further with the team.Thanks,Abhishek<Marking as correct for better visibility on the thread>

lewlewland · Answer

This is still an issue. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t on the same file. Sometimes it won’t update, sometimes it won’t even create a new link. It makes it really difficult to integrate this into my workflow with clients. I sold many of them on this system and now I constantly have issues with it. It’s frustrating having to send clients different file types every time I send them something to review

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