CS3: Period in findWhat crashes InDesign

[Walt Wooton]

This code crashes InDesign CS3:

app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = ", .";
app.changeTextPreferences.changeTo = ".";
app.changeText();

This works fine:

app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = ", \\.";
app.changeGrepPreferences.changeTo = ".";
app.changeGrep();

Hope this helps someone.

Walt

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

checked on few machines - no problems

maybe your file is damaged ? try to INXing it

[Jongware]

Sadly, CS3 may crash on virtually any scripted search/replace. I had it crash on double quotes, tabs, and even spaces. Usually, moving the specific s&r from regular to GREP or the other way around clears it for that offending file only.

The symptom seems connected to a specific file (as it may always fail on one and never on another), but saving as INX and re-loading never cleared it up for me. As it is quite a hassle to find the exact code it crashes on this time (with intermittant crashes on each new try), I usually shrug and do my replaces from memory. After all, it's just a few hundred of'em.

[Peter Kahrel]

Deleting the cashes helps, at least for a while. Patching up to the latest versions (5.0.4 and 6.0.1) seemed to have helped, too. The cashes are at documents and settings/user/local settings/application data/adobe/indesign/version 6.0/cashes (or version 5.0).

Peter

[Thomas Ruesch]

Aaaah so that's why my script keeps crashing… Thanks Jongware.

So, long find/change queries can make InDesign crash when scripted? It's a shame that this is still the case in 2016 (using InDesign CC 2015.2).

Guess I'll use Automaticon's Multi-find change instead then 😞

[Dave_Saunders]

How are you setting your FindChangeTextOptions and/or FindChangeGrepOptions? If you are attempting to set these directly to null then that will cause crashing.

Dave

[Fred Goldman]

I know that I've run into findText crashes a lot. So much so that I stopped using them entirely and have used findGrep instead.

[Peter Kahrel]

> I know that I've run into findText crashes a lot. So much so that I stopped using them entirely and have used findGrep instead.

find/changeGrep is also (a bit) quicker than find/change/Text.

Peter

[Harbs.]

Fred,

I have a fuuny feeling that your crashes are related to your long search times... I think you've got to work out a better way of processign your text files.