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InDesign 18.2 is extremely slow especially when editing text on windows 11 machine

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 19, 2023
10 replies
13995 views

My InDesign has gone EXTREMELY slow since the update to 18.2.1. I'm working on a Windows 11 laptop. Placing images works fine, but editing a simple text box, typing a word, any formatting takes several seconds to materialise. Typing a word in a text box will make the word appear letter by letter and each letter takes a few seconds to appear. It is unworkable and simply unacceptable for a paid-for product.

The laptop's resources are not at their limits. I still have spare processor capacity and spare RAM when InDesign decides to think about every little edit, so that's not it.

It never used to be anywhere near this slow, but I can't keep on working like this. Any ideas?

Correct answer Robert at ID-Tasker

Robert, Joel, and Rishabh - Thank you for your suggestions. I tried Rishabh's suggestion saving as IDML, opening and resaving as INDD. This worked! Thank you! This also creduced the file size from 33MB to 21MB with no loss of data or issues that I can see. Love to know why this worked. Maybe Adobe can add this to the next update and improve their INDD save process?

Robert, Joel, and Rishabh - Thank you for your suggestions. I tried Rishabh's suggestion saving as IDML, opening and resaving as INDD. This worked! Thank you! This also creduced the file size from 33MB to 21MB with no loss of data or issues that I can see. Love to know why this worked. Maybe Adobe can add this to the next update and improve their INDD save process?

By @mgsummer

You are probably only using Save, right?

When you work on your document - InDesign is constantly adding Undo History so you can go back to an empty document - untill you close it.

When you do Save - all this info is preserved in the file - but when you close your document - it stays there but isn't accessible anymore - so your file is getting bigger and bigger and is getting slower to open and work.

When you do Save As - with a new name - InDesign is removing this Undo History.

IDMLing is even deeper housekeeping - it also purges all previews.

When you open IDML file - InDesign is rebuilding it from scratch.

This also helps to fix corrupted documents.

You can use Save as often as you want - but you should do Save As with a new name at least once a day.

This has two benefits:

1) removes Undo History so your file will open quicker,

2) you have a backup copy.

morsy74

Participant

Try remove the font folder in package it will work, it worked for me.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Try remove the font folder in package it will work, it worked for me.

By @morsy74

This will mean that you've fonts duplicated - installed in the System and / or in Adobe's own folder and / or in the Fonts subfolder.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

As someone pointed out on another thread - Cross-References can also make InDesign slow and unresponsive.

A

AntwanFisha

Participant

Sometimes turning off Preflight while working on the document speeds things up immensely.

M

mgsummer

Participant

Having the same performance issues. Selecting text in Indesign takes 3-5 sec. If I type a few words I have to wait 2-3 sec. to see the words pop in. I can fly through complex Unreal Engine scenes rendering 100 million polygons butter smooth but Illustrator locks up when pasting a 10kb vector graphic? I wish I was kidding.

Indesign and Illustrator worked fine 10 years ago yet are now unusable on a high end workstation? (AMD 24 core, RTX 4090, 128GB RAM) This is completely unacceptable. I have tried tweaking program settings in nvidia CP, methods listed in this thread, and more with no change. We cancelled 3 CC seats for our video team due to similar Premiere issues moving them to Resolve. Looking at alternatives for INDD, AI, and PSD now. Adobe has been on the decline for 10 years, ignoring its customers and focusing on shareholder value. It's almost as if they are taking our monthly subscriptions for granted. = (

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@mgsummer

I don't think it's a CC problem - rather your specific system configuration.

Network - server / cards / drivers, AntiVirus / AntiMalvare software, fonts, additional hardware, drivers for this additional hardware, etc.

What is your machine / configuration?

Can you strip it to the barebones - cpu / ram / ssd / built-in/generic network card - install fresh system and CC - avast as AV?

A

AnnaLundh

Participant

Hello!

This has been a constant problem for me using InDesign since about version 18.0 (could be 18.2 as in your case). Without going into too much detail, I concluded that it is not a hardware or network issue. Deleting preferences, changing computers, changing network, reinstalling, upgrading to new version, fixing potentially corrupt files...nothing hit the spot.

However, i just wanted to add a piece to the puzzle that might help the experts. What surprises me is that I experience a huge difference in performance (specifically in text editing) when switching been Essentials and Essentials Classic workspace. Essentials is not great but usable, whereas Essentials Classic is not usable at all. Anyway, I hope that might unlock a door for somebody with better knowledge of the program's inner workings than I have :).

Thanks!

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@AnnaLundh

InDesign is always very slow if you have Links pallet open - or in case of Essentials Classic - CC Library might be a problem.

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AnnaLundh

Participant

Hi Robert!

Thanks for getting back to me. I haven't ever payed much attention to CC Libraries, so that was an interesting point. I often have Links palette open and as long as I am using the Essentials workspace, everything usually flows pretty well on my machine. (Although not quite as well as previous program versions).

I did a little experiment closing the CC-Libraries and Links Pallettes, both individually and simultaneously. I can't say I notice any major changes in performance. Essentials works better than Essentials Classic in alla scenarios. So it still feels like a bit of a mystery. Please let me know if there are any other functions i should look att.

S

stefanp910592Author

Participating Frequently

After many months of suffering from extremely poor performance, I have identified and resolved the issue. I was running Avast free antivirus. Even when created an exception for the entire creative cloud folder and even when I temporarily disabled it, the slowness issue was still there. That's why I excluded this as the culprit in my early investigations.

I have now completely removed Avast and just use Windows Defender instead, and my InDesign is back to full speed now!
I was running Avast previous to the issue occurring, so I don't know if it was one particular update to either InDesign or Avast that caused slowness/incompatibility, but in any case, the issue is resolved.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Strange, I have avast as well - although free version - ID 18.4 - and no problems at all...

S

stefanp910592Author

Participating Frequently

After not using InDesign much for a few weeks, we are now working on our next magazine and the problem has resurfaced. I had a look at the CPU usage on the Task Manager Performance tab. Whenever it goes really slow with the overall CPU utilisation being low to moderate, it appears that it maxes out ONE of my 16 logical processors, whereas the other 15 threads are idling on low usage. I managed to get hold of Adobe support and they took control, reset the preferences again and did a few other bits and bobs in the background. They also deleted a load of third party fonts, which I was careful to only reinstate when they were needed.

It worked fine for a day or so and then the old single-thread usage reappeared and the system went really slow again. Not sure what to try next, but I may be back on the support chat, unless this additional information sparks more other ideas on here.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

InDesing is a single thread application anyway so it doesn't matter how many cores you have - I have 2x 10 core CPUs + HyperThreading - and it won't work any faster.

Not sure if it was suggested before - what kind of antivirus software are you using? Can you turn it off?

Also, what with Windows Defender? Can you turn it off?

Do you have admin rights?

S

stefanp910592Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks, Robert

I've read before that InDesign is a single-thread application, but why did always work reasonably fast and now - since last month - it's so slow? Clearly, this is not something I looked into when everything was working at a reasonable speed.

I'm using Avast One. Yes, I have admin rights, yes, I can turn it off. The firewall is also controlled by Avast One. Having turned it off temporarily, it didn't make any difference.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

How much RAM?

How often are you doing SAVE AS with a new name?

If you are constantly hitting ONLY Ctrl+S - InDesign is keeping Undo history in the file - which is inaccessible after you close your file - but makes file bigger and slower to work with.

Do SAVE AS with a new name at least at the end of the day.

The mentioned IDMLing (*) can help if your file got corrupted - or you can do it from time to time for best housekeeping - always remember to not overwrite your original INDD file!!

(*)

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/reset-indesign-preferences-and-other-troubleshooting/m-p/11990234

S

stefanp910592Author

Participating Frequently

16GB RAM - as I said, InDesign goes slow without even making use of the available resources.

I didn't know about the ctrl-s behaviour. I don't constantly hit save, but I do a few times a day and I certainly don't use save as, as I just want to keep one file and not pile up multiple versions or constantly having to delete them. I've not heard his one before and I'm working on my 47th issue of our magazine and never had this problem before and never had to use save as.

What do you mean by IDMLing?

Thanks

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Just do a test - save your INDD file with a new name - compare the sizes.

Then export your INDD file as IDML - select new name - then open this IDML file and again - make sure to save it with a new name - so you won't overwrite your original INDD file - compare size of the file and hopefully it will work much quicker.

One more question - do you keep placed files linked or do you embed them after placing?

Do you work over the network or locally? Either if your INDD file is saved on the network / VPN drive or links are there?

Scott Falkner

Community Expert

Are you using a lot of GREP Styles or complicated GREP Styles? I have found that GREP Styles can slow down text editing quite a bit, even with relatively simple expressions that don’t affect text flow (just text colour). When this happens I duplicate the styles using GREP then delete the expression from the style used. I can restore the GREP by deleting the old styles and telling InDesign to replace using the duplicates.

S

stefanp910592Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you. I don't use those. In fact, I had to google what they are, so no, it can't be those.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

After an update, it can help deal with issues come up to restore your InDesign preferences and caches. Here's how:

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/

Let us know if that helps.

S

stefanp910592Author

Participating Frequently

OK, thanks, but the link you posted only talks about Windows 10 not Windows 11. Using ctrl-alt-del immediately after starting InDesign has not brought up the option to delete the preference file, so onto the instructions to manually delete them, I found that I can't find the Library folder under my user name folder (I've also checked for hidden files/folders).

Apart from that, surely this paid-for software should not require such a level of intervention?!

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

I've had the unreasonably slow text editing problem strike me before, and usually clearing preferences fixes it for me. In two cases I can bring to mind, this was caused by working in clients' files that were fairly well mistreated (e.g. lots of crashes in the document history). In any case, when you have Weird Stuff like this, clearing out your prefs first is a pretty typical first step in troubleshooting.

Using ctrl-alt-del immediately after starting InDesign has not brought up the option to delete the preference file,

You mean Shift + Control + Alt, right? Control + Alt + Delete is used to open up the Task Manager in Windows.

I found that I can't find the Library folder under my user name folder (I've also checked for hidden files/folders).

The Library is part of the path in the macOS instructions, not the Windows instructions:

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