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jasonj9348717
Participant
February 4, 2026
Question

Placed InDesign files not exporting to PDF

  • February 4, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 22 views

Ever since the update in November last year we have not been able to successfully export any files that contain placed InDesign files to PDF. I placed a post in the community forums last year where multiple other people experienced the same issue but now that post is gone without being addressed so I am posting it here again.

Last year the exported PDFs resulted in low resolution images regardless of what export settings were used. Now we aren’t even able to generate a PDF with constant errors.

The reason we used placed InDesign files is so that if any changes are made to the original we’ll know because the file will show as modified. I do not want to copy and paste the InDesign file or place a separate file like a PDF or JPG as that doubles our work and doesn’t guarantee us that we will make sure all files are up-to-date. 

We’re using InDesign 21.2 on a 24 inch M1 Mac - everything was working fine until the latest update and we can’t afford to revert back to the previous versions now.

I need a solution for this ASAP as it has been almost 4 months without a sloution and it is affecting our productivity.

    1 reply

    leo.r
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    February 4, 2026

    I placed a post in the community forums last year where multiple other people experienced the same issue but now that post is gone without being addressed so I am posting it here again.

     

    Yes, forum posts of the last two months are not transferred yet to the new forum software. That’s why you don’t see the post.

     

    Other than that, it looks like this bug isn’t solved yet. Maybe someone from Adobe will chime in with more info.