InCopy story updates crashing InDesign

[li_designer]

Hi all,

Having a serious problem which is causing us no end of headaches.

I am working on an InDesign document as the designer, with two colleagues (writers) working on InCopy assignments plugged into the main InDesign document.

I am using an assignment file for the workflow, the 'server' is Dropbox.

When I attempt to update certain InCopy stories in InDesign, with edits made by the writers, I get crashes to desktop. Every time.

Certain stories update fine, though.

I have a sneaking suspicion it's stories with endnotes that are crashing.

We are also in the process of installing missing fonts (so fonts I've used in the design, but the writer's don't have) on the writers' machines. Perhaps this could be a cause?

In the last hour, one of the writers is now receiving crash to desktop when they open the InCopy assignment on their machine.

They CAN open the individual stories contained in the assignment (at least the ones we've tried so far) so we could copy and paste these into the InDesign document, but the problem is we will then lose all the work I have done with endnotes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sam

[BobLevine]

What version of InDesign? What version of InCopy (They should be the same)

What operating system from each.

Have you tried skipping the Assignments and just using a Layout workflow? If you use a Document fonts folder, that should solve any font problems.

[Geоrge]

>> the 'server' is Dropbox.

If "server" is classic net-folder InDesign not have crashing?

[BobLevine]

Why was this moved to InCopy forum? The crashing issue is with InDesign!

I'm moving it back.

[Geоrge]

Yep, ok. Let's incopy users don't find this thread

[li_designer]

Thanks all, just got off the phone with Adobe support, where the gentleman took control of my screen and looked at the error log. The issue was to do with:

'Copied text becoming corrupted'

I pressed for more info but this was basically all I could learn - so it sounds like someone using InCopy has copied text from Word, and this has become corrupted somehow.

So I can rule out fonts.

I have the latest version of InDesign and InCopy. InDesign is on the latest macOS, and the writers are on windows 10, they only downloaded InCopy in the last few weeks, but it's worth me checking if there has been an update since which they need to download.

For now we are going back to the old fashioned, slow method of the writer's either sending me marked up PDFs or entirely new word documents, or sitting next to me for small edits with me actioning them.

We cannot risk losing another day of work / day and a half of productivity, until I know what caused this, and how to ensure it does not happen again.

Any advice is as always very much appreciated.

Thanks so much

Sam

[li_designer]

So we went back to using InCopy cautiously today, with the writers sat next to me and me ensuring I update their work in InDesign frequently. However, a story which was part of the Assignment, but not edited by anyone except myself in InDesign, became corrupt.

It showed up as 'missing' in the Assignments panel. When I right clicked 'Show in Finder' it was not missing, it was there, and it opened in InCopy fine!

Yet no matter how many times I attempted to update, unlink, or even delete the frames containing this story, I received a crash to desktop. Then, after another attempt, the whole InDesign document became corrupted and wouldn't open. Luckily, we use DropBox so I was able to use its version history to recover a version of the file from the night before. But that whole episode lost us about an hour of productivity.

I can no longer risk using InCopy. It just seems so unstable. I would be so grateful if anyone who has had similar issues, and resolved them, could let me know how! Because in theory it's such a timesaver, in practise though, it's incredibly risky and I cannot recommend it to anyone!

Thanks,

Sam

[BobLevine]

Whatever is happening there is unique to your system. While it’s certainly far from perfect, I’ve never seen anything like this.

You didn’t answer my earlier questions about versions. Latest version is not an answer. Please give us exact version and build numbers for ID, IC, Mac, and Windows 10 versions. Also, list any third party plugins, particularly font managers.

[SanyamTalwar]

We have released InCopy CC2019.0.2 with lot of stability fixes. If you are not on 14.0.2.324 then I would recommend you to upgrade to latest version as it is more robust.

If you still face this issue even after updating, please submit the crash report to us. (Guidelines to submit crash are available at https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/submit-crash-reports.html)

Also, please send the following information to santalwa@adobe.com :

• Error snapshot or video recording of the issue?
• Is(Are) the issue related to a specific document(s)/asset(s)? If Yes, Can you please provide the document(s)/asset(s)?

Sanyam Talwar

[Whirligiggle]

I appreciate I'm late to the discussion, but for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, I've had success deleting the preferences. Also, if that fails, then export your InDesign doc as and idml file, reopen it and save a copy. This should strip out any unnecssary information (and hopfully some bugs) leaving you with a cleaner, leaner InDesign file.

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi, 

Thank you for reaching out and sharing the solution that worked for you. In addition to this here is an article, that has detailed steps and a video to reset preferences in InDesign.

Thanks

Rishabh