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aressag63960812
Participant
August 20, 2025
Question

My InDesign file won't open. The pop-up says "Automatic recovery failed last time" upon opening.

  • August 20, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 234 views

My InDesign file kept crashing, so I rebooted my computer, and now it won't open at all. Every time InDesign tries to recover the file, it states "Automatic recovery failed last time," and gives me the option to either begin recovery or cancel the action. When I press yes, it closes the application entirely.

3 replies

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 28, 2025

@aressag63960812 bad recovery data can send InDesing into a loop of consatant crashing.

I have no idea if the folks at Adobe can do anything with your recovery data, but I know for sure you cannot do anyting yourself with it.

If things are still crashing when you try to open the file, I would suggest you copy the file to a new folder and see if it will open from there which will preserve any original data that might be of use to the Adobe team. I suspect your file is damaged beyond help that anyone else can provide, and failure to open from a new folder would confirm it is damaged.

if you're on PC you can try the toll at INDDRecovery — a program for restoring corrupted InDesign documents  or you can try the blind open and export to .idml script on either platform. Blind open and IDML-export 

Sometimes you get luck and one or the other works.

If you have a lot of time invested in the file and it would be expensive to rebuild from scratch, there is also a paid recovery service at Markzware.com (Bad InDesign or Quark File Recovery Submission Form ). Again, not always successful, and you pay the submission fee even if they can't recover the file.

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 28, 2025

Sorry, I just realized that copying the filke won't stop InDesing from trying to read the recovery data, which is stored not in the folder with the document, but in the InDesign Recovery folder, and the only way to stop that is to remove the data. I would suggest, as long as Adobe is interested in it, to simply rename the recovery folder to Recovery_OLD and restart InDesign to generate an ne empty recovery folder. I'm going to test this now to be sure that advice is correct.

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 28, 2025

Yes, that does work.

Your InDesing Recovery folder is located in your User profile. On Windows its in \Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign\Version <no.>\<language>\Caches

it will be a similar location on Mac, but you'll have to show hidden files to find it.

nikunj.m
nikunj.m
Legend
August 28, 2025

Hi aressag63960812,

Just checking in to see how things are going? Were you able to resolve the issue, or are you still experiencing the same behavior?

 

Thanks,
Nikunj

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Anubhav MCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 20, 2025

Hello @aressag63960812,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind sharing more details, like the version of the OS/InDesign installed, and a link to the recovery files from the folder location mentioned in this article (https://adobe.ly/4mTds6J), so I can check it with the team?

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

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