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Question

InDesign 2018 and Catalina

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 22, 2021
4 replies
972 views

My copy of InDesign 2018 successfully running on OS X Catalina (currently 10.15.7) successfully for two years, stopped opening two days ago. I made no changes to the OS before this happened. I click the icon on the dock, the block dot under the icon appears, the centre of the screen momentariliy flashes, and then nothing. the black dot disappears.

I repeat – that I have run this for two years. Adobe support tell me that Catalina won't run 2018, which is simply not true.

All pre-2019 CC apps have also stopped working.

I suspect that Adobe have disabled the applications and for some reason I was forced to log back into Cloud Desktop App the day this happened.

Anyone else experienced this?

How to

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rob day

Community Expert

I’ve only skimmed this thread but did you try deleting your InDesign preference and cache folders? Also, did you try removing any 3rd party plugins and scripts before staring ID?

Simon LucasAuthor

Known Participant

Randy Hagan
Bob Levine

thank-you both for your advice

Bob. Clean install. Yes you are right and it would be cleaner, but this is getting more complicated by the minute. Here's why and what i worked out so far:

The reason we cannot install (Illustrator 2018 for example) on Catalina because (I think) the installer is 32 bit. I tried to open the installer package and run the installer via the terminal but it exits with an error. This must be what Adobe are saying when they say that the software '32bit components'.

So following Randy's original advice. I installed Mojave on an external disk using an older Mac that can run it. I then installed Illustrator 2018 – and it runs. I then attached the drive to the MacBook Pro with Catalina and opened the copy of Illustrator. It looked good for a minute – the icon healthily bounces in the dock, it asks to update the path to the application, it contacts Adobe for licensing clearance – and then stops dead. I don't know why.

I realised now that the copies of all my 2017 and 2018 versions of CC applications I have been using were migrated from an earlier Mac when I got the 2019 MBP. This is how I had bypassed these installation problems before.

Next Step: I will install Mojave on a new SSD* drive. I will then install all thje apps I need on that system. I will then install a clean Catalan on the same SSD drive (another partition) and I will migrate all the CC applications over to it.

*NB to anyone trying this – you CANNOT install Catalina or Big Sur on an external HDD drive, It WONT run properly. Running on a HDD, the OS is a like a slug on mandrax, and applications take TEN MINUTES or more to open. This is (I have read) because Apple have removed all HDD optimisation support from OS Catalina and beyond. OS Catalina and greater have to be run on SSD drives.

M

Manan Joshi

Community Expert

This must be what Adobe are saying when they say that the software '32bit components'.
By @Simon Lucas

This could be it, but mainly I read that these 32 bit components are other software modules like the licensing modules etc, otherwise MAC apps have been shipped as 64 bit for quite sometime so they should have worked on Catalina as well.

*NB to anyone trying this – you CANNOT install Catalina or Big Sur on an external HDD drive, It WONT run properly. Running on a HDD, the OS is a like a slug on mandrax, and applications take TEN MINUTES or more to open. This is (I have read) because Apple have removed all HDD optimisation support from OS Catalina and beyond. OS Catalina and greater have to be run on SSD drives.

By @Simon Lucas

Don't say that, I spent a good part of my weekend to install Catalina on an external HDD to use as a plugin development machine for InDesign(thought about going for Big Sur but then settled on Catalina). I did notice huge load times for the OS but general operations once the OS loaded was accpetable, but somewhere I was dreading what you said. Now this will keep playing at the back of my mind whenever i see the beachball on that Catalina installation.

-Manan

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

For what it's worth, you got far further than I did.

I had a client that didn't bump up past InDesign CC2018 due to vital plug-in issues. Updating from MacOS 10.14.6 Mojave resulted in problems with CC2018 — far before the current version upgrade to 10.15.7. Adobe warned me far in advance that would be the case, and explained why, before my OS update borked my old install. I wasn't surprised, and I couldn't blame them for things going down as they promised me it would.

My solution was to roll that computer back to a previous MacOS Mojave install that I had preserved with a previous backup. So I was back to match their configurations in about an hour. And to get the client updated plug-ins so those folks make the step up to current software, and I could upgrade that lagging system to match up with the rest of my shop.

If you don't have such a backup, Apple provides for downloading, and installing, older operating systems. You could then roll back and reinstall the old versions of your software that would be compatible with your preferred configuration.

So if you're set on using CC2018, you can roll back. But it's not going to be easy, and it could well cause more complications matching up all your applications and utilities to follow suit.

I know this isn't the answer you're looking for. And if you're not looking for an answer, we've all felt your pain at one time or another. I'm not speaking for Adobe. I'm an end user just like you. But this is about all that can be offered here.

Sorry,

Randy

Simon LucasAuthor

Known Participant

H i Randy

thank-you for your support. It's occured to me that i could 'roll-back', but roll-back to what? I have made no changes since a minor OS update months ago.

I have used Catalan since 2019 on this MBP. So I cannot roll back to an earlier OS.

I thought that if I could work out what has changed, then I could simply fix the things that changed using Timemachine.

For example, I did use TimeMachine to reinstall Illustrator but that did nothing.

Also all applications of 2017 or 18 have stopped. this really suggests to me something has happened at a deeper level than the application installs..

I wonder whether to uninstall the cloud app. It looks quite complicated, but may be worth a go.

I think my other plan is (as you suggest) to do a complete restore using TimeMachine onto an external USB-C drive. Just to see whether that works - and then at least I would not disturb my current system and drive.

The trouble is that these fixes and experiments are looking to be quite a lot of work. I'm hoping someone could shed some light on this before I embark on the 'rebuild' option.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Restoring your Time Machine to an external drive, then booting off the external, is a good course of action ... if it works.

When I was working in northern New England with a wide range of clients, I'd have an external (USB 2.slow) drive for each of my clients configuration. That lets you go back and forth between old configuration and the now one as I needed, and if I needed it for the day, I'd do a backup of the current configuration, then install from the client configuration backup. When I got home, I'd then install from the current configuration backup and things would be good as new.

A couple of things to consider:

The backup needs to be sympatico with not just your OS install, but all your applications. If you go back to, say, a Mojave install, CC2018 but end up with Microsoft Office 2015, that may introduce more complications than you fix.
You also want to do a backup of your current configuration so you can get back to the baseline. That way if things go hopelessly awry, you have, excuse the expression, a backup to bring you back where you started. This may also be a good time to install the latest version of CC apps in your current configuration. If things don't work out, you'll at least be up and running with the latest software if the experiment goes badly.

Hope this helps.

Randy

BobLevine

Community Expert

Simon, I've branched this off to its own topic.

Adobe has not done anything to your old installation so something else has happened and I'm not in any position to even guess. That said, Catalina requires 64-bit applications so anything that doesn't comply with that would cause those applications to not run.

All of that out of the way, why do you need to use such an old version?

Simon LucasAuthor

Known Participant

As I said they did run and the applications were full working. The icons were still as normal – meaning not the with 'cross-put' icon on top. So, from what I can see the CC 2017 and 2018 versions were 64bit compatible.

I like old versions. I am a working person and enjoy getting my job done and with the tools I am familiar with. After 30 years I find it a nuisance to keep up with the changes bought about with updates - especially when I have deadlines. Of course I also have more modern versions of software, so that i can share work with others who provide source materials in those versions. So, I also dip into them as needed to explore them.

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