InDesign 17.0.1 crashing when exporting book to PDF

[erika.davies]

I'm trying to export our company catalog using InDesign 17.0.1.105. This is the first year I'm having the problem of it crashing on me. Our catalog is setup as 80 files within the book file. I'm trying to export the book the same way I always do; I use the "Export book to PDF" within the Book Panel. It allows me to name the PDF file and starts the exporting process, but right before it finishes, it crashes both my InDesign & Adobe Acrobat. It creates a useless, damaged PDF file. 

I see others have had this problem with past version of InDesign and had to use the 2017 version in order to make it work. I can only go back to the 2019 version, but please tell me there is another way of fixing this problem before I have to rebuild the book in InDesign 2019.

[Eugene Tyson]

Sorry for your trouble. 

I'm a user just like yourself and encountered this before.

Try create a new book file in the new version of InDesign.

Then reimport your files into the new book file. 

Try the export now - and see if it fixes. 

If not - then try exporting half your book and see if it fails.

If it fails on one side of the export -  you can try tracking the issue down by keep halving the documents until you find the culprit document. 

You can then try exporting just that document on it's own - and see if it fails - if it does you can keep exporting half of the document to see where the problem is.