Corrupt Table of Contents Fix

[cbphoto]

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but I thought I'd post it anyway to help others avoid frustration.

I've been working in an ID document created in v13.1 for the last few months. It's a simple 32-page product catalog. For the first draft, made several months ago, in v13.0, I produced a TOC from the page headers. The "create TOC" worked perfectly, using my character/paragraph styles as desired.

After the latest client revisions this week, more information was added (copy, pics, vector art). When I went to update the TOC, InDesign crashed. It crashed even when I tried to delete the text box containing the TOC. Performing any TOC function caused the program to instantly crash.

I tried resetting the program prefs, but it didn't help.

What did repair my corrupt file was this:

The first approach to debugging an InDesign file that crashes is to save it (export, in versions earlier than CS6) as an IDML. Opening the IDML in InDesign will create a new INDD based on the saved XML information.

This has another benefit: InDesign files grow the more you edit them. Internally, an INDD is a database, and it doesn't shrink as much as it grows while you are working on it. The INDD > IDML > new INDD cleans out all the cruft.

This info is from this web site.

[barbara_a]

You could try uninstall/reinstall with the Adobe CC Cleaner tool. Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems

[robertfweem · Accepted solution]

I was having the same issue with a TOC with[ i.e. updating the TOC and/or attempting to delete the textbox was causing immediate crash ] but INDD>IDML>INDD sequence fixed it completely.  I'm on V15.0.1.  Thanks for the help! 

[tyagens]

I know this thread is now ~5 years old and the response i'm upvoting is ~4, but the IDML resave trick worked for me, here in the future 🙂  —  October, 2023.

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi @tyagens,

Thank you for reaching out and confirming the solution that worked for you. I have marked it as the correct answer. I am sure it will help other community members. 

Thanks

Rishabh

[Melissa Fisher]

The INDD>IDML>INDD solution just fixed this exact issue for me too, on version 16.0.1 (updating my InDesign version, however, did not).

[Stewart C]

I am updating the TOC on an InDesign book that has 10+ documents. I updated to the latest version of InDesign, tried the INDD>IDML>INDD sequence only on the file that contains the TOC, and tried the same sequence in all the documents in the book, none worked. The app still crashed each time. Any other suggestion?

[frankab85611510]

Try this: open the file with the older version of Indesign (right click, open with previous version), then click OK when asked if you want to convert the file.

I finally managed to delete the table in that older, converted version. Good luck everyone!

[TersiaChristoforos]

I have exactly the same problem with the TOC, saving as IDML did not solve the problem and deleting the text box also crashes InDesign.

Using v16.1

[Sean5CF1]

Yes.. The INDD > IDML > new INDD also worked for me

thank you

s

[sengoleg94458358]

I had the same issue - Table of contents was crashing everytime, I did something with the text box. The best/only soulution is INDD>IDML>new INDD. You may have to save the file entirely new (delete all old files!). Thanks for the helpe!

[odon]

also works for me, thank you

[duartec99653667]

Worked for me. Thanks

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

IDMLing is the last hope - how often are you doing SAVE AS with a new name?

[mmiummiu]

Thank you! Upon reopening InDesign it also gave me an error message along the lines "this file is corrupt, do you still want to open it?". Saving to .idml allowed me to delete the TOC and then I saved back to .indd.