Indesign 2025 Crash Error

[Gökhan30347826wixl]

"Adobe InDesign is shutting down. A serious error was detected. Please restart InDesign to recover work in any unsaved InDesign documents."

I am getting this error on a file I am working on in InDesign. I was working without any issues yesterday, but today I am getting this error and I haven't been able to find a solution. Could you help me? (I'm using MAC.)

[Bill Silbert]

Is this happening with just one document or with any file that you try and open? If it is happening for all documents try resetting your InDesign preferences. This will restore the program to its defaults. Hopefully, this will stop the problem.

To reset preferences on a Mac:

The User Library folder in which InDesign’s preferences are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that InDesign is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N). With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the folder called Preferences and within it find the folder called “Adobe InDesign” and the file called “com.adobe.InDesign.plist” and delete both that folder and that file. When InDesign is next launched it will create new preference files and the program will be restored to its defaults.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files in this manner is that after you’ve reset up the program (make sure that no document window is open) to your liking, you can create copies of your personalized “mint” preference files (make sure that you quit the program before copying them—that finalizes your customization) and use them in the future to replace any corrupt versions you may need to delete.

[Gökhan30347826wixl]

First of all, thank you very much for your response. I followed your suggestions, but I am still encountering the same errors. I only experience this problem with one specific file; I am able to open any other file without any issues.

[Peter Spier]

If you are able to open the file, immediately export to .idml and try opeing that, saving with a new name as a new .indd file and see if the problem is gone. This often works for files with built-up minor corruptions from repeated saves with never a save AS.

If you are unabler to keep the file open you can try using the script at Blind open and IDML-export 

[Gökhan30347826wixl]

I downloaded the file you mentioned and followed the instructions to try and open my corrupted file, but I am still getting the same error: "Adobe InDesign is shutting down. A serious error was detected. Please restart InDesign to recover work in any unsaved InDesign documents." I don’t know what to do next.

[Peter Spier]

I'm sorry to say that it's sounding like this file is not going to be recoverable using ordinary measures. There is a remote possibility that the Adobe engineers can recover it if you email it to the, but no guarantee they will look at it, nor any timeline, nor will they necessarily bother to get back to you with any response one way or the other. That email address is idfile@adobe.com

There is also a paid recovery service from Markzware that often is successful (but again, no guarantees, but they will respond) that you can consider if the cost of starting over would be more than a few hundred dollars. The website is Bad InDesign or Quark File Recovery Submission Form 

[leo.r]

As an advice for the future: I assume you're not running any incremental backup system? Otherwise, you'd be able to retrieve a version of your file from yesterday, or a few hours ago, or last week. Whatever your backup disk capacity allows. So make sure you're running Time Machine or a similar solution; or work off a cloud server such as Google Drive or Dropbox, which have their own backup facilities.

[Eugene Tyson]

Share the file here - or send us a DM and we can take a look at the file.

I'm on Windows can try the BLIND IDML script that works on Windows.