InDesign 2021 getting stuck at 'Creating PDF' when packaging files

[bron pye]

Hi! 
Is anyone else experiencing this? I am trying to package print files. Everything runs smoothly until it get to the 'Creating pdf' stage in the process. InDesign is all up to date. Please help!!!

[Pooja Rathi]

Hi,

Can you please provide InDesign version and platform in use. This will help debug issue at the earliest.

Regards

Pooja Rathi  

[bron pye]

Hi InDesign 2021 16.1, MacOS Big Sur 11.2.3 thanks for the help

[BarlaeDC]

Hi,

Can you try this with a very simple indesign file, and make sure that it can process the document the whole way through? This will guide us as to whether the problem is with the application or the document.

[bron pye]

hi. Ok packaging works on very simple ID file.
• Is it a network problem maybe?

[bron pye]

Hi again I have moved all my files and links to the desktop to avoid any network lag, but still the same issue...

[BarlaeDC]

HI,

Are you able to simplify your document by removing pages/graphics ?

[bron pye]

Hi again 😉 thank you for the help.
So the linked files are hires files for point of sale print. This might be the issue. I can't make them smaller/ simpler because they are for the printer.  I managed to by-pass the issue but just skipping the pdf step.  I've never had this problem before which is a it concerning.

[GabbyGrey]

same here

[Magali24124818sk8f]

it happens to me all the time with all my versions of indesign... stays stuck at creating pdf and IDML stage.  

[C330 S]

This could be caused by high resolution bitmap graphics. 
InDesign takes ages to downsample bitmaps (we had this issue on different computers  (at least) in CC 2019 and CC 2022). 

Often times InDesign isn’t able to export the PDF at all. 

To test this, you could disable resampling of bitmap graphics. – This should be enough to circumvent the problem.

A more permanent solution is to scale down the images in Photoshop, so that the effective resolution is below the maximum export resolution (as in the PDF export setting: »Downsampling for images with resolution above xxx ppi«). 

If you want to find out if the problem occurs on a specific page, you could export the PDF from the book panel. As this export isn’t a background task, you can watch the export status and maybe spot the section where it beginns to stall.