Cancelling Background Tasks

Question

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 Answer

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.

Dave@meyerprojects · Answer

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.

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