Participant

Question

Multiple InDesign files disappearing

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
November 13, 2023
5 replies
910 views

Our InDesign files have been, apparently, deleting themselves. We're working in a Windows SMB server environment shared with 6 designers using Macs and InDesign 2024. This started happening in mid-October when we noticed about a quarter of our .indd files were randomly missing on our server. Some were new, many (most?) were not.

It is only .indd files. Nothing else.

We thought it was a one-time event and proceeded to restore the missing files...only for those, plus more, to go missing over the next few weeks. At this point, I'd say 90% or more of our InDesign files are just gone. At least we have online backups (a pain to access) and pdf copies (difficult to edit), but this is getting seriously frustrating.

I contacted Adobe support and they said they couldn't help because it's a server environment. We've been using InDesign for at least 12 years this way and have NEVER had this sort of problem with it. But I'm guessing it does have something to do with the server because we still have all the .indd files that were saved locally and on external hard drives.

One of my coworkers watched an .indd file disappear in Finder about 5 seconds after saving it. At this point, we're saving locally as well, but still...what's going on?

Our server:

Windows Server 2022 Standard,16CORE,FI,No Med,No CAL, Multi
Language

Our Macs:

Mac Studio 2022, Apple M1 Max, 32 GB RAM

We're mostly running Ventura 13.5.2, though some may be slightly different

I'm running InDesign 2024 (19.0) and I believe we're all updated at this point, though some of us may have still been on 2023 when this first started happening (not sure when the update came out).

Anyone else had this problem of self-deleting InDesign files?

Bug

D

David33448367qzet

Participant

Same problem and longtime CS user.. Multiple PACKAGED InDesign folders and the INDD files have vanished. Not sure when this happened but going to have to leave Adobe products if I can't rely on them.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Same problem and longtime CS user.. Multiple PACKAGED InDesign folders and the INDD files have vanished. Not sure when this happened but going to have to leave Adobe products if I can't rely on them.

By @David33448367qzet

What platform, OS and InDesign versions?

What's your server configuration?

D

David33448367qzet

Participant

Mac
Currently running OS 15.3.1 but must have happened previously as backed up versions reveal the same files are missing from packaged folders.

Currently running InDesign 15.3.1 but again seems to have started under a previous version.
Local hard drive only with occasional backups to an external drive.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@karendig

Someone just posted:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-for-windows-opening-files-as-read-only-when-oplocks-disabled-on-network-share/td-p/14847950

Might be an answer to your problem?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@karendig, How do you save files to your server - (a) you work on your server directly or (b) you work locally and then save INDD file - backup.

You can't really be sure WHEN files go missing? Only when (a) or also when (b)?

...

From v18, I think, something changed and InDesign started to be extremely sensitive to network speed - access times or so called lag - so if your network isn't fast enough - it might be related?

InDesign is trying to save file on the server - but something goes wrong - lag - and it is unable to finish the operation, reports problem to the server - and server simply removes "unwanted" / "unfinished" file?

But this should result in an immediate error message from InDesign?

Do you experience INDD files opening as read-only - when opening directly from server?

K

karendigAuthor

Participant

Normally we work on the server directly, although now we're working locally and copying to the server.

We're not usually certain exactly when they disappear, but I would say B, simply because files I've copied from my computer or restored from a cloud backup have later gone missing. We just go into whatever folder they should be in and notice they're gone. Many of the files that have disappeared are files that haven't even been opened in a year or more. Some of them are more recent. So far, the newest files are generally there...but in a week or so, they may not be.

We have a 10 gigabit connection to our server (it was the main reason we went with these particular Mac Studios).

I have not personally experienced INDD files opening as read-only, and haven't heard any of my coworkers mention that.

I'm working on trying to get the server logs so I can share here.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

So if the files go "missing" after a while after being copied to the server - then it looks like the problem is with the server...

Are you sure that ONLY INDD files are deleted?

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Have you checked to see if there is an update for your server? When updating to new versions of old programs it is often a good idea to make sure that the total environment is updated for compatibility. The one exception to this is at the present time Creative Cloud programs are not fully compatible with the latest Mac OS Sonoma. Stay with Ventura on your Macs.

K

karendigAuthor

Participant

To add (since I can't figure out how to edit)...

We're talking hundreds, if not 1000+ InDesign files that are missing.

And, so far I don't think we're missing anything locally, but maybe I just haven't noticed yet.

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