Cancelling Background Tasks

[aaronw33336729]

Hi there,

I tried exporting my indesign content to a pdf yesterday afternoon and it said i had to cancel my back ground tasks to do so.

Turns out i had tried this three times and three pdfs were trying to export at once. I cancelled all three so i could start again and since 5pm yesterday they're still 'cancelling'.

Is there any way i can get rid of these? My InDesign won't even close if they're still trying to cancel. Unsure of what to do and desperately need this content in PDF format for work.

Thank you in advanced!!

[Bill Silbert · Accepted solution]

If you are on a Mac you can Force-Quit the program in the following manner. Click on the desktop and use the keyboard command option-command-esc. This will bring up the Force Quit Application window. You can then click on InDesign and select the Force Quit button to quit the program and stop all of the background mayhem that you have going on. On a PC you would Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc to directly open the Task Manager. Then in the Applications tab, click on InDesign (the status will say "Not Responding") and then click the End Task button. In the new dialog window that appears, click End Task to close InDesign. When you relaunch InDesign it will give you the option to recover the document but as long as you had saved prior to trying to make the pdfs then it is probably best to not do so. Usually you can proceed with the document after that without any problem.

[Jasneetsinghjas]

Thank you, That worked for me!

[AnkePiknerKraft]

Thank You!!!!

[Darrik26611561mo38]

This worred for me thank you so much 

[Julian32501804e9l4]

This did not work for me.  The background task came back.

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

https://creativepro.com/a-new-workaround-for-that-pesky-background-export-issue/

[Vanessa34967840sknw]

thank you so much !! this helped me, ive been struggling all night and thought i broke my laptop !!

[Dave@meyerprojects]

It's now 2024 and I still find InDesign to be extremely unstable on my MBP with M1 Pro chip. I've found the only way to successfully export multiple versions of a (quite large) file to pdf is to:

1. export pdf #1, check to see if it worked
2. export as idml
3. close first indd file, open fresh idml and export pdf #2
Rinse and repeat

Although sometimes it also works if I save the idml file as indd and export. Very rarely works twice in a row though, crashes far more than it exports - whenever I try to export one pdf right after another it usually just hangs or crashes. The force quit shortcut is a good one to know for InDesign users, unless it just quits itself (which it usually does for me 4-5 times per day). I've verified the file multiple times and no errors. I end up with a folder full of indd and idml files that I then have to go through and clean up afterwards. 

[leo.r]

By Dave@meyerprojects

Such issues are certainly uncommon so there must be something else involved. For starters, what are your versions of InDesign and macOS, as well as RAM amount and free disk space?

[Andy Magazine Editor]

Hi, None of these suggestions work for me. I have updated to the latest version. I can start a new document and use font Times New Roman. However, if I open an old document, that was perfectly fine, three weeks ago, it automatically starts the background tasks immediately and I can see the background tasks. There are 4 in the process of loading fonts (times new roman), they do that continually. However, though they show up in the background tasks menu they do not show up in the spot on the bottom of the menu and allow you to cancel them. Every Times New Roman font the document has, has a beige background behind the text indicating a missing font, yet the 4 styles of Times New Roman fonts are in the font folder. This happens every time when I open an existing Indesign document. When the old documents are opened they open as Times New Roman (OTF)] not Times New Roman and that is the problem.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You can disable background tasks a couple of ways...

• See the post from Nov. 3, 2023 about adding a specially-named file.
• I believe that a book file is not processed in the background. Try adding the document (by itself) to a book file and export there. 

The TNR font issue is something that happened with a recent Windows update. 

See: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A9%E3%83%A0-discussions/win...