Help!! DW keeps crashing

[Angela5C73]

Please help! Since end of September Dreamweaver has been constantly crashing. It doesn't seem to be caused by anything like saving or opening a file although it does happen occassionally when I do this, It's just happens randomly. The IT guy at work has tried everything suggested on the forum already and also reimaged the laptop and reinstalled everything, but it's still happening. I'm only creating HTML emails, so nothing too technical going on.

I've tried sending a crash report to Adobe using the pop up that comes up when it crashes, but never get anything back!

The IT has now got me to try alternative softwares, but none even come close to DW so really want to get it working without crashing. PLEASE HELP!!!

[Jon Fritz]

"I'm only creating HTML emails, so nothing too technical going on."

Are you creating site definitions for each email and keeping all assets within the defined local root folder for each?

[Angela5C73]

No. No idea what site definitions are if I'm honest.

All assets are hosted on our servers, as we load them into our email marketing software, I don't want to have to change the image url twice for every image.

[Angela5C73]

Just want to add, I've been using DW in the same way for nearly 5 years now, and only just started crashing in September this year

[Ben M]

The only thought with HTML emails is that maybe it has something to do with trying to retrieve the images from the server.  Can you confirm if files with images on a different server are causing your same issue?

Also - what version are you using?  Is this the latest 2021 version or has your IT restricted you to another version?  And what OS are we talking about here (Mac/Win)?

[Angela5C73]

I've got DW 2021 and it's all up to date and using Windows 10. 

Is there anyway to identify retrieving images from the server could be causing the issue?

Really don't want to go down the root folder scenario, as image source will still need to be amended once in our email marketing platform, with the amount of emails I'm creating lately, that would be a pain.

[Ben M]

Yes - Just work on an email without any images in it or one where they are on a different server/domain.  If the HTML email opens fine, then there is something with the connection whether there is a potential firewall blockage leading to a freeze/crash.

Personally speaking, I work with a lot of email marketing platforms like Eloqua, Pardot, Hubspot, etc. and would not recommend building out entire emails in DW because you are having to retrieve images using absolute references which depending on servers can cause slowness.  Typically in this case, using snippets to help build out templates to then install/use within your platform would be a much more efficient way of building emails as opposed to building them out in DW.

[Jon Fritz]

When I work on HTML emails, I create a Site Definition for each client. I then make sure all files necessary to create the email are stored in the Local Root Folder of that "site" so DW doesn't get confused. A lot of weird stuff will happen with the progrm if you use it without setting up Site Definitions...

https://helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/how-to/define-a-dreamweaver-site.html

Even if you never add server information, DW still wants all files being accessed by a given page to be within that page's "site". I link all images to local copies, then as a last step, before uploading to the mail service, I do a quick Find & Replace to add in the absolute paths to the images used.