InDesign 2020 keeps crashing with one specific file

[Julia1594]

Hello,

I have a huge problem with one file since this afternoon. It worked perfectly fine till then.

So I was rearranging some files on my hard drive to make the folders a bit cleaner and clearer. With that I also moved a folder that included photos I used in that InDesign Document. So when i opened the file I got a error message that files are missing – no suprise cause i moved them. I tried to relink them like I usually do and got the message it found the other photos as well. Perfect I thought but I relinked wrong photos. I didn't change the file name just the location of the folder they are in. After that I tried to relink every photo separately which didn't work and I moved the folder with the photos back to the original location.

Maybe I made the mistake to do that while I still had the InDesign file open.

The problem now is that everytime I want to copy something (like a text), as soon as I press command+C InDesign chrashes. It freezes when I want to open the paragraph formats (hope thats the correct translation, I use it in a different language).

In general the file seems slow. 

I have no clue why these crashes happen. Especially since I still have an older version of that file with double pages but I had to change it to single pages and also worked with the single page file without a problem. But I don't want to change it again.

https://pastebin.com/Lm9QjWN1 

That's the crash report I got last and I thinks it's the same everytime. 

I run InDesign 2020 15.0.1 on that MacBook.

Never had such a problem before. 

I hope someone can help me.

[Julia1594]

Quick update: after a lot of trying and updating to 15.1.3 I think the photos aren't the problem.

There was no error shown with the photos when I was finally able to open the file. I was also able to open the paragraph formats and they are all gone.

InDesign crashed again when I tried to copy a part of the text.

Oh and everytime after InDesign crashed it crashes the first time I want to reopen it. When i try a second time it launches again but not directly after the crash.

[Julia1594]

Sorry I can't edit the last post. 

What i wanted to mention there is still no problem with the old double paged file which has the same paragraph formats.

[Lluis Scriptografus]

Hi, Julia:

I run and old version of InDesign CS5 since a couple of years and I have had some problems like yours. I think this is caused by "fatigue", work with a program for many years. I recomend to reinstall the program. There are billions of "0" and "1" running up and down accross the computer memory, the hard drives, etc. I suspect that sooner or late something will fail.

I recomend this because your file seems to be corrupted and the cause could be an unstable InDesign. This could avoid future problems.

About "copy and crash" issue, the only similar experience I've had is when I copy text from a selection on a PDF and paste it directly in InDesign. I solve this pasting it previously in TextEdit, which seems to remove all but the plain text. I think it reencodes as mac roman so InDesign accept it.

But first, try this. I'm assuming that your unusual problems are due something is broken (in InDesign or the doc). This tips could be repare something to save as possible of your work.

1.- Open your doc and "save as..." as another new file. This discard a lot of cached information and will srink the file size.

2.- Package your file (sorry, I have an spanish version, I don't know if this is the english name). You export the file and collect all the fonts and links in the process. The result is a folder ready to share. This process relink all needed links to a subfolder named "Links". Now you can try to manage the correct links from here.

3.- About the paragraph styles. I do this trick often in order to arrange the paragraph styles when more than one person works in the same document.

We have two documents, the newer (with some missing or disorganized pharagraphs) and the older with the correct ones. I change the name of the bad pharagraph style in the newer document to "Pharagrap_name + BAD". Then I copy from the old doc a textframe with the correct pharagrahp style. Now, I erase the "Pharagrap_name + BAD" style and when asked, I replace it with the pasted one. If something is broken within the document relative to that pharagraph style, I create a new one from zero (internally).

Sorry, no more ideas by now! Good luck!