Inspiring

Answered

Paragraph and Character Styles very slow when making changes to an existing style, help!!

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
April 27, 2025
19 replies
14275 views

It started back in March and has persisted ever since.

I have the latest, updated version of InDesign and Windows 11. I did not make any changes prior to the issue, and I have a newer desktop computer. I have been working with InDesign since it was the Pagemaker program, so knowledge is not an issue here. And, I have never had this problem in my 33 years of using Adobe programs.

That being said, here is the issue:

Randomly, when I edit an existing paragraph or character style, it can take 30 seconds to over a minute to be able to make that change. It happens when I choose a different setting, and also when I hit okay.

If I close ID and restart, it helps a bit, but not completely, and the issue continues to worsen as I make style changes.
I have deactivated all fonts, and that did not help.
I have installed and reinstalled ID, and that did not help.
I have rebooted SO MANY times
I have tried to delete my font cache, but I get a message that it is in use even after I reboot.

I am a book designer and work on book interiors every day, and this is KILLING my workflow.

Any help with this issue would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Performance

Correct answer victoriawolf

I am having the same issue. Taking all day to edit a file. Long wait for Font styles, character and paragraph changes or editing. I am not able to figure out from these messages what to try and if there is an actual solution. Thanks. BTW, what is the term ID? Mentioned in these posts.

I have found that restarting ID (InDesign) helps and also deleting ID caches before restarting also helps. Here is where the caches are located: Local Disk c:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Adobe/InDesign/Version 20.0/en_US/caches/

I delete these files:

AdobeFontList.lst

FontClassificationCache.txt

FontMaskCache

and the TypeQuestCachse folder

And, I have found that the Adobe Garamond Premier Pro is corrupted and causes many issues.

Show previous replies

E

Emeka Jones

Participant

Has this been resolved? I have read through your issue, and I am facing exactly the same... I am not sure what to do.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Has this been resolved? I have read through your issue, and I am facing exactly the same... I am not sure what to do.

By @Emeka Jones

Do you use Garamond font?

V

victoriawolfAuthor

Inspiring

The issue has not been resolved. I am doing workarounds to be able to get my work completed. To be clear, this is a very specific issue that affects only Paragraph and Character styles. There is no issue with any other functionality with InDesign, other Creative Cloud programs, or any other program on my computer.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Victoria,

I downloaded and tested the file and it operated normally on my Windows 11 machine.

I edited styles and deleted the front page PDF link. Nothing much stood out to me related to performance speed.

That leads me to suppose it could be your application or machine.

Have you emptied all of Windows "Temp" folders lately?

Mike Witherell

S

StargelNaz

Participating Frequently

I am experiencing this exact issue. Long time user of inDesign. Tried the tings.
TERRIBLE workaround to keep me on-time with projects: I make adjustments directly to text and then redefine the style from that. For some reason, that doesn't trigger the bug. BUT! It's not good practice, and we need a fix! 🙂

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

You'd have to supply documents to test and try as it's not happening for everyone. There's a lot in this thread about things to try - but I'd urge you to go through them and try them to see if it helps.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-freeze-when-changing-things-in-paragraph-style/td-p/15225022

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Did you try an IDML clean up?

How deep goes the character style definition? All properties or only some? Make so few definitions as possible!

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victoriawolfAuthor

Inspiring

No, I did not try an IDML clean up.

The character and paragraph styles are very detailed, but I have been doing this for years and this issue just cropped up in March.

I built a new computer in November, so all the Adobe programs were installed then, which is not too long ago. My previous system, had them installed for about 7 years with no issue.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Charakter styles should only be defined at minimum, so you can use the same style in various paragraph styles. It will reduce the number of character styles drastically and this will speed up the program massive.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @victoriawolf:

I don't see that this has been addressed yet:

I have installed and reinstalled ID, and that did not help.

Uninstalling InDesign leaves remnants the the program behind. The InDesign cache/preferences files can become corrupt over time and cause unexpected behaviors and these will stick around after a regular uninstall.

When InDesign starts misbehaving, I would either:

Rebuild cache/preferences (https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/), or
Uninstall using the Adobe CC Cleaner tool (https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html) before reinstalling with the CC desktop app.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

V

victoriawolfAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you!! I will try this and see what happens. Victoria

C

cecyfernandes

Known Participant

You managed to solve the problem. I didn't!!! Thank you.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Try a thorough reset. The link i provided includes a lot of subtle insight as to which one of 4 methods to apply. Be sure to export all your settings first (which is a relatively new feature).

P.S. I salute your PageMaker heritage.

Mike Witherell

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victoriawolfAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you! It does sound like a total reset is needed.

PageMaker was amazing for the time and what allowed me to step into this 33 year career.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@victoriawolf

How old is your file? When was the last time you've done SAVE AS with a new name?

Do you have auto-update on or InDesign?

Try downgrading to a previous minor version - 20.2 or 20.1 or even 20.0?

Unless, you were on 19.x and in March - you've been updated to 20.x?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@victoriawolf

And - in which version of InDesign your INDD file has been created - and last used by you?

And does this slowdown happens with every document? Even a new, blank document - with minimal contents?

How big is your document - it terms if pages, number of images, amount of text - and size in MBs?

Do you use GREP Styles?

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Virginia,

Here is a compendium of troubleshooting that explores slowness and the multiple ways you can approach a reset of InDesign. There are so many things to try. You don't explicitly say, but is this one document or any/all documents?

Mike Witherell

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victoriawolfAuthor

Inspiring

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. All documents. I find it hard to believe that I have to troubleshoot something that was never a problem before. But I will check of the document.

Thanks!

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