inCopy 2020 and InDesign compatibility with word files

[roser86613354]

We discovered an issue after updating inDesign to 2020. When a templated word file (from an editor who is working on PC) is brought into inDesign 2020 (on Mac Catalina and Mojave iOS, we tried both) we are unable to export out the inCopy assignments properly. It takes an unusually long time to export and then the editor is getting errors like “Unclosed Token” or when we try to open it just spins until the application stops responding. The incopy files that are being exported are 10x as large as they normally are. When we try to save the indesign files as idmls to open in older versions of inDesign the export gets stuck at 33% and cannot finish. Therefore work that was done in 2020 must be redone in 2019 in order for the editors work with us.

This issue is not occurring when we get icml files directly, only files from Word. We have figured out that a workaround for now is to use Indesign 2019 from the beginning of the workflow when we have to use Word documents. Is this a known issue? Is there a fix?

[Mike Witherell]

How do you know that the Word docx files are not buggy?

[roser86613354]

hi Mike!

Good question. I only assume that it is not the word file because through a lot of tests we found that only indesign files *created* in InDesign 2020 on Catalina were having this issue. We think something with the OS seems to be at play because we reverted the machine back to Mojave using inDesign 2020 and the word files and incopy worked fine like they always have. File sizes are back to normal. Same word docs used are no longer causing an issue. 

When we saw the issues in Mojave it was with inDesign files that were created on a Catalina machine not Mojave machines. Whatever the cause might be, we seem to be working fine again with the older OS