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L Gryfe
L Gryfe
Inspiring
July 22, 2023
Question

Footnotes causing InDesign to crash

  • July 22, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 724 views

I am working on a 35-page document in InDesign 18.4 (ID 2023). There are 31 footnotes in the file, which were all working fine. Today, I tried to reflow some text and as soon as the footnotes had to reflow, the document crashed. I've tried quitting and relaunching, saving as IDML and reopening in the previous version of ID (2022), restaring the compute and even rebuilding the document from scratch and pouring in the text again, all without any luck. I found a post from 2021(?) that recommended opening in ID 2021 but I don't have that version anymore. (Also, I don't really consider that an acceptable solution, frankly.) If I can't fix this, I will have to insert all the footnotes manually. 

 

Feeling a little desperate here. Grateful for any help.

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2 replies

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
July 22, 2023

Can you share your document - and source text? 

 

If it's Docx - can you try to save it as RTF first and then import / copy&paste? 

 

And what platform / OS version and if source text has been prepared on a different platform? 

 

You can also try to reset InDesign's preferences:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/reset-indesign-preferences-and-other-troubleshooting/m-p/11990234?search-action-id=426358331621&search-result-uid=11990234 

 

    L Gryfe
    L GryfeAuthor
    Inspiring
    July 22, 2023

    Content is already in ID and footnotes were fine when I first imported them from the Word doc. It wasn't until I had to reflow the text that the troubles started. Not sure why I would go back and re-import the contetnt to reformat and clean up everything a second time. Also, in my opinion resetting the ID preferences is not an acceptable solution. I have very particular settings that I've built over time to make my workflow most efficient. I'm not going to discard them for what I believe is a shortcoming in the program. 

     

    To add a little more context, what I was doing wasn’t a case of simply adding a few words. I was actually adding an acnhored text box the width of the text box that's holding it, anchored above the line. I prefer to do this to an inline text box in its own paragraph because I can preserve the exact settings of the body text style. However, given that this didn't work, I used a regulare inline text box and added space before and after the paragraph. Maybe this sheds some light on why it wasn't working (or, possibly makes the whole thing more confusing if I didn't describe it well).

     

    OS is Mac Monterey 12.0.1 and ID is the most up-to-date version. Sorry, I don't have permission from the client to share the files. 

     

    thx

    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Legend
    July 22, 2023

    Rebuilding from scratch means - at least for me - doing everything again. 

     

    I'm not sure what kind of preferences you've set and how destructive resetting would be - but sometimes document can get corrupted - you've already tried IDMLing, which didn't help - but also InDesign's own preferences can get corrupted - especially after an update. 

     

    In the link I've provided there should be info on how to preserve your current preferences before you trash them. 

     

      E
      Community Expert
      Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 22, 2023

      Start a new document with the same dimensions and margins

      Keep this document open.

       

      Then on the troublesome document go to Pages panel and select all the pages and choose Move Pages

      With this menu open you can select your newly created document.

       

      Move all the pages (do not copy and paste the text over) 

       

      See if the footnotes behave normally on your new document.

       

      --------------

      Now if that isn't working that's fine - there's obviously something else at play.

      If that's the case we can try some other things. 

      Robert at ID-Tasker
      Robert at ID-Tasker
      Legend
      July 22, 2023

      OP already tried recreating document from scratch... 

       

      E
      Community Expert
      Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 22, 2023

      It's not the same thing. But ok - I must have skipped over that part a bit. 
      I've had similar issues with imported text in the past, mostly what I do is long documents with complex headers/footnotes. 

      I've been here before, and weirdly moving the pages to a new document can resolve issues that even recreating doesn't. 

       

      Anyway - the shoutout on the DOCx is good. 

      I've also found saving as a simple .doc file also works really well. 

       

       

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