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Question

issues at the end of interactive pdf export

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 13, 2025
4 replies
468 views

I'm trying to export a very large document (2700 pages) and while the process itself is very lengthy (over an hour) it seems to be going smoothly until it reaches the last page at which point it either stops responding and i get the pinwheel or it gets stuck in the last stage. If I check the activity monitor at that precise point I see Indesign stopped responding. The entire pdf drawing process goes perfectly up to that point.

It says I have no errors and all my links are working.

I've tried every tip I could find online, it seems that nothing works. Emptying cache, saving a copy, saving as imdl, exporting in smaller chunks, uninstalling and reinstalling, reverting to an earlier version....

I had tested the export when I was 500 pages in creating my document and it worked perfectly. It took days to finalize and now that I have my 2700 pages completed this issue arises and blocks my work.

Now I find that generally the software seems to be working worse and worse over time ever since I started experiencing this issue. Now even just launching it seems to be asking a lot, taking a very long time and sometimes just crashing. It works after a few tries. Opening a document also only works randomly. Not sure what is happening.

I need a solution as I've already missed my deadline. Any ideas?

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Is this a single document or it is divided in chapters (indd) and assambled in a book file?
Are all linked images external links or are they embedded?
What file types did you use for linked assets?
What font types did you use?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@defaulthumr7vittpa6

Can you share your INDD file? If it's confidential then you can share it with me privately - please click my nickname.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

There was a thread recently about a similar problem - what's your hardware configuration and specifically - how much RAM do you have?

Then, do you have everything in one piece - one single INDD file - or a Book with multiple smaller INDD files?

What if you export with "smallest file size" PDF profile - lowest quality / resolution?

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

If a document is not behaving well then try

File>Export

Choose IDML

Open the IDML in InDesign
Save the file as a new InDesign file with a new name
See if the issue persists.

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Try resetting your preferences:

Windows: Start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
macOS: While pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
A dialog will appear asking to delete the InDesign Preferences, select 'Yes' on this dialog.
Further info and instructions here if needed:
https://helpx.adobe.com/in/indesign/kb/indesign-preferences-support-file-locations.html

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Divide and conquer

Back up your files and work on a duplicate for this

Something odd in the document

Try exporting pages 1-1350 and see if that works fast

Try exporting pages 1351- 2700 see if that works fast

Whichever side is not working - say 1-1350

then try exporting 1-675

then try 675-1350

This method is known as divide and conquer

Eventually you'll track down the problematic pages - shouldn't take long

Once you know which page(s) is causing the issue you can try the same method of systematically removing items from the page to see what's causing the issue.

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All else fails

Reinstalling rarely fixes everything - you can do a complete reinstall using the
Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Eugene Tyson

He / she already tried "divide and conquer".

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

@Eugene Tyson

He / she already tried "divide and conquer".

By @Robert at ID-Tasker

They said they tried 500 pages and it worked

I offered the divide and conquer method as it doesn't seem to have been tried, is my understanding of it.

By doing 500 pages, then you have try the next 500 and the next 500 etc.

Divide and conquer by halving pages is quicker and could track down the issue.

I've had it before where exporting the file crashed every time - so I exported half of it and it worked, exported the other half and it worked - so I just combined the file in Acrobat.

There was nothing I could find as to why doing all the pages didn't work for me.

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