InDesign 2025 Crashing When Using Find/Change with Overset Text

[katieh64658769]

Since updating to 2025, we've run into an issue when using the Find/Change window—if we're searching for something that happens to be in overset text, clicking "find" crashes the program. Has anyone else run into this or found a solution? (The file size doesn't matter; it happens on long books and short books alike.)

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[Robert at ID-Tasker]

How exactly would you like to help me? I'm very curious.

By @Jindřich3403716436xp

By comparing your situation / configuration to what helped others in the past. 

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

It helped me to downgrade InDesign. What does this mean? That there is a bug in the new version, which is confirmed by the fact that this discussion appeared here. As for the past, the only application that has crashed regularly in my 30 years of using Adobe products is Indesign. Now, if I tell you the exact version of Indesign that has the bug, will you help me, as a community expert?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Right now, the best solution is to downgrade to 2024. 

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

Yes, I understood that as soon as I was unable to work. But I still wonder why you needed to know the Indesign version, when even someone from Adobe here writes that they know about this bug and will fix it.

[leo.r]

But I still wonder why you needed to know the Indesign version, when even someone from Adobe here writes that they know about this bug and will fix it.

By @Jindřich3403716436xp

Once again, this particular issue should be fixed in InDesign 20.0.1. What exact version of InDesign do you experience the problem with?

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

Sorry, too many experts here. It was your fellow expert who wanted to know the version of Indesign.

[leo.r]

It helped me to downgrade InDesign. What does this mean? That there is a bug in the new version, which is confirmed by the fact that this discussion appeared here. Now, if I tell you the exact version of Indesign that has the bug, will you help me, as a community expert?

By @Jindřich3403716436xp

So, once again, what exact version of InDesign are you using? This bug should be fixed in 20.0.1.

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

If you'd read what I wrote, you'd know that. I'll just add that I won't take any chances and wait until the new version is properly debugged. I also told you nine days ago that version 20.0.1 didn't help.

[leo.r]

If you'd read what I wrote, you'd know that. I'll just add that I'm not taking any chances and will wait until the new version is properly debugged.

By @Jindřich3403716436xp

Once again, this particular issue should be fixed in InDesign 20.0.1. You never stated what exact version of InDesign you're having the problem with. If you do experience this issue in InDesign 20.0.1, please report here, and this problem should be looked into again. 

[leo.r]

P.S.

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/48996323--id-4256174-in...

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

Too bad you don't read what anyone writes to you, because you would know that I answered this question a few days ago. Version 20.0.1 didn't help.

[leo.r]

Too bad you don't read what anyone writes to you, because you would know that I answered this question a few days ago. Version 20.0.1 didn't help.

By @Jindřich3403716436xp

If you do experience this particular bug in InDesign 20.0.1, then you may want to report it again here:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs

At this point, this bug is considered fixed (see the uservoice link I posted above).

[IT_Brian]

READ THIS FIX:

InDesign 20.01 is the fix for this issue. but this is a beta version so you have to install this version differntly. This is why people are not getting this 20.01 version that specifically fixed searching overtext.

Adding confusion to this, InDesign isn't showing people a version number past 20.0 on old versions. This makes it much more difficult to realize you don't have version 20.01.

Fix instructions:

1. Open Creative cloud and Click the apps Icon on the left: (see picture)

2. Select Beta (see picture)

3. You will now see the option to download InDesign 20.01. (see picture)

FIXED

[IT_Brian]

When beta is installed, it reads InDesign Beta 2025 version 20.1.0.3. (This version crashes searching overtext still, this version should be fixed before release)

Now I can press update inside the InDesign 2025 beta app, and InDesign 20.0.1 is now finally availible to install. (This ended up being version 20.0.1.32 once installed)

Once installed, InDesign 20.0.1.32 no longer crashes searching overtext. The find command no longer finds any overtext. It just states (overtext) and does not find anything.

So they fixed the crashing by removing the ability to search overtext....yikes. And InDesign 20.0.1 was only availlble inside the beta app.

I am still trying to get this person to update Sonoma 14.5 all the way and see if this issue persists.

[IT_Brian]

The final update: User has the latest MAC OS 14.7.2 and InDesign 20.0.1.32.

InDesign 2025 has lost the ability to find overtext, it doesn't crash, but the find doesn't even go to the page where the overtext exists. The find just states "overtext"

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

You must be joking... This is unbelievable. "Well done" again, Adobe.

[Sascha_Bucher6985]

It's been a few months, but for the last 3 days I've had a lot of crashes in InDesing, especially when searching & replacing. Without having done an update 3 days ago. This is understandable even on a page with a text box and a word in it that you are searching for. I sincerely hope that it is clear that the problem still exists. InDesign version: 20.2; Mac OS: 15.3.1; Mac M3 Max.

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

If you want to work in peace and avoid dealing with problems, I recommend immediately downgrading to version 19.5.1, which is the last relatively stable version, and never upgrading to a higher version again.

[Elaine Wilson 2]

I'm still having this problem as well. The reply stating it was fixed in November is not true.

InDesign 20.0, MacOS Sequoia 15.3.2, scads of disk space, 128GB RAM, and so on

[leo.r]

InDesign 20.0

By @Elaine Wilson 2

will the problem persist if you update InDesign to its current version 20.2?

[theryzor]

Experiencing a crash about 80% of the time when doing Find and Replace. I can't finish this project because InDesign keeps crashing. Attaching a screenshot of the simple operation I'm trying to do.

Version 20.2, updated 12 days ago.

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

Downgrade to version 19.5.1. You will still be able to open newer versions of documents, and newer versions of Indesign do not bring any major improvements. They are just even less stable and have a lot of popups.

[theryzor]

Will do! I wish Adobe would spend less time with feature creep and more time making the app faster and more stable. It’s getting to the point where opening and using InDesign is almost pure friction.

[Jindřich3403716436xp]

I don't know if I'll ever upgrade again. I had to downgrade because of the constant crashing when using Find/Replace. Even the version that was supposed to fix the problem had the same problem. I need to work, not deal with unnecessary problems. Fortunately Adobe CC converts newer versions during the opening process.

[mazdaspeed]

I'm skeptical that this is actually confined to 2025. Until today I was running 2024 (19.5.3) on a Mac Studio M1 32GB (on 15.3.2) and it had been quite stable.

Yesterday, within Find/Change, 19.5.3 satrted crashing when I would click the style search icon in the Change Format box. This was happening about every other file as I'm going through and adding chara styles to the same words across 66 different documents. There are zero instances of overset text in any of these documents.

This is why/how I came to this ID Community thread. When I read your suggestion not to go beyond 19.5.1, I decided to roll back, but the issue persists. For now, I'm leaving 19.5.1 installed. For what it's worth, I determined the first week that 2025 (20.0) came out, after crashing almost immediately, that I was waiting until it stablized... Here we are 6 months later.

I have been able to identify a sequence of steps before a crash happens upon clicking the search icon. It goes like this, and happens in all documents when the same steps are taken:

1.  Working from within Find/Change dialogue box, under GREP tab, I can click on the search icon within Change Style and successfully select a Chara Style and apply that style to all instances of a word. I then go on to my next word, select a different Chara Style, and apply that.
2. Everything worked fine for about the first 20 files. Then I discovered that one of my words that did not really need a GREP search was part of a larger word, so I went to the Tex tab so I could simply limit the search to the whole word. This also worked fine, however it sets the stage for a crash.
3.  Retuning to the GREP tab from the Text tab, I select my word to search from the Find history, and the moment I click the search icon in Change Format, it crashes ID and everything closes.

Once I restart ID and load a document, as long as I don't move between using the GREP and Text tabs, and just work from the GREP tab only, I can continue to work on successive documents without crashing. At this point I've just decided to tackle the lone word in a seperate workflow from the rest of the words. Or I suppose I could define a GREP that selects for that as a whole word.