Footnotes causing InDesign to crash

Report · Jan 13, 2021

I am working on a large document (80ish pages) that has over 500 footnotes. I got to styling the 50th page and my ID now just crashes when I try to do anything. There are not a large amount of large images - just 4 on chapter page openers. Just a lot of text, tables and footnotes. I am almost positive it is because of the footnotes. Is there anyway to bring in text and style and 'hide' the footnotes? And bring them back in after it is styled? I work on this every year and this particular version of ID seems to be struggling worse than ever. Help!! I need to get this report done and I can't get past page 56.

I have also done all the tips to speed up ID to no avail - turn off pages preview, live drawing, preflight, typical pic view, etc.

THANKS!

Report · Jan 13, 2021

How much RAM, btw, and tell us about your versions and OS? Big documents need more RAM and a very well-maintained OS.

Mike Witherell

Report · Jan 13, 2021

Latest version of Adobe, Mojave, on a macbook pro, 16G RAM, 2.9 GHz processor. The actual file is only 11.8 MB.

Report · Jan 13, 2021

I suggest:

Start each major section with a paragraph style that starts on a new page. Just set Keep Options > Start Paragraph > On Next Page.

Avoid "balance columns" in your text frames unless you really need it on a specific page.

Break your big document into separate InDesign "stories" (sections) using:

https://github.com/Id-Extras/Break-Text-Thread and using your major section header paragraph style as the marker for where to split the text into "stories." https://creativepro.com/how-to-install-scripts-in-indesign/

And if your main text frames use columns, consider having footnotes not span columns.

Report · Feb 03, 2021

Hi there,

We have just released Adobe InDesign 2021 (v16.1) with multiple stability & performance fixes.

Please update your app to the latest version & see if it helps with your concern. Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Ashutosh

Report · Dec 08, 2021

Hello Adobe,

I just would like to report that we have been having the same issue described in the first comment; in fact, at my company I have to design long reports with hundrends of footnotes, and the original document is a Microsoft Word document placed in INDD. I also figured out it was the handling of the footnotes that at some point (and it seemed quite random, I have done many tests) would cause INDD to crash when doing a simple task, like eliminating a space, hitting return, or trying to format one line. Unfortunately, this issue was noticed first last year, and it is still happening with the current up-to-date 17.01 release of the software.
So, I hope you guys can figure something for the future, considering that Microsoft is still the most used platform by all the researchers, scholars, etc., and we cannot go around it, we need to be able to handle those long documents with footnotes while we use InDesign.

Thank you so much for your attention.

Kind Regards,
Sandro

Report · Jan 26, 2022

I am having the exact same issues as the original poster. I am using an updated version of INDD (v 17.0.1) on Windows 10 Enterprise Version 21H2, Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3920.0. I have tried so many things and it is super frustrating. I, too, am on a deadline and can't get past a certain page. I have placed Word documents, but I have also copied and pasted and removed all formatting and put in all the footnotes by hand. My IT department is stumped and Adobe won't help, they direct me back to my IT department. I've not had any trouble with previous versions of INDD. This really needs to be fixed!

Report · Jan 30, 2022

I'm still having similar problems with 17.0.1, not so much crashes (thanks for that) but performance so slow that sometimes it takes a few seconds for a character I typed to appear on the screen. In a document that I have been editing without problems until the recent InDesign updates.

This seems to be primarily in the longer and more complex "stories" in my textbook chapter. (Each major section is a Story, to improve performance.)

I used the free BreakTextThread script to break my longer Stories into several ones. This seems to help. I guess either (a) I can combine them when done, or (b) an update to InDesign will fix this problem, too. Here's hoping!

Report · Feb 06, 2022

I have two more interesting facets to this to post.

First, I was typing in a section (Story) which had no problems with slow typing, was adding some text and a couple of Crosslinks, and suddenly it apparently got to some limit and typing was very slow.

Second, I switched to Story Editor and it made absolutely no difference in how slow the typing was.

Given the problems I had with the Copy Editor (beta) corrupting files, I saved my file as temp.indd, and then tried editing the text first in the Story Editor. Still took 6-7 seconds for the hourglass to disappear after deleting a single letter. Then I tried to Copy Editor (beta). In it, I was able to edit without any delays. And when I was done with a few edits, in Copy Editor (beta) I clicked on "Done": it updated the text in a second or so! Wow! No wait! No corrupted file!

Report · Feb 07, 2022

Wow!! That sounds exactly like the issues I am having. I'll have to see if I can try Copy Editor. Glad you were able to figure out a fix!

Report · May 05, 2022

Hi all. I had the same problem and after thousands of restart-indesign I did this: I converted footnotes to endnotes, I placed the images and then I converted again endnotes to footnotes. It worked. And after that I can move titles to next page, smth I couldn't do before. Seems like the bug disappeared.

Report · May 05, 2022

Thanks for posting. I divided some of my chapters into smaller "stories" and this seemed to cure the lagginess, or maybe it was a slipstream upgrade of InDesign. If when I put them back together, I have problems, I will try your technique.

Report · Sep 17, 2022

Thanks SO much. This exact issue was turning a 1-hour job into a 6-hour job, and so far this stupid little trick seems to have resolved the issue. Footnotes were imported from Word, I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

Report · Aug 31, 2023

I just had the same problem - styling footnotes made my document crash.

I discovered that if I expanded the width of the text box I was working on so that it went well off the pasteboard, I could style my footnotes, then put the text box back where it belonged and save my document without any problems. Who knows why this worked, but it allowed me to finish styling all the text! Cheers!