InDesign 2025 is not exporting to PDF.

[Hatice Kübra T]

I have a previously prepared Arabic document. I’ve made the necessary corrections, but when I try to export it to PDF, the application crashes.

The pages are laid out from right to left.

When I try to create a new document, I can’t find the right-to-left page layout option.

I need urgent help.

[Peter Spier]

Version of InDesign and your OS? Are you using the ME version?

Any error messages?

There's some very good information about setting text direction in @Joel Cherney 's replies at https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/text-direction/m-p/15265245#M620524

[Hatice Kübra T]

I’m using the English version of InDesign 2025 on macOS Sequoia 15.4. I recently switched to the ME (Middle Eastern) version because I’m working on an Arabic document. However, I’m still unable to export the file to PDF—the app crashes every time I try.

I also tried saving the file as an IDML, but the text got messed up: the colors changed, and random spacing appeared between letters. I’m attaching a screenshot to show what happened.
As a temporary fix, I converted the text to outlines, and that worked—but obviously that’s not ideal for future projects.

Could this be related to the font I’m using?
Any advice on how to properly work with Arabic text and avoid these export issues would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Hatice Kübra T

If after outlining texts - crashing stopped - then 99.99% something is wrong with the font. 

[Hatice Kübra T]

What can I do for the font

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What can I do for the font

By @Hatice Kübra T

Find a different one? 

EVERY document crashes? Have you tried a new, blank document with some text using this font? 

[Hatice Kübra T]

I tried. In the new texts I write, it adds spaces like the ones in the screenshot I sent.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

I think I might have an answer. InDesign has recently switched its complex-script text rendering engine to HarfBuzz, and many older fonts seem to fail to render correctly.  We've seen questions here about older fonts for languages like Urdu, Gujarati, or Nepali, failing with symptoms a lot like yours. So I think you can safely ignore my longer message about document corruption and IDML, and just try these two things:

1) Can you tell us the name of the font in question? Is it one I can download and test myself?

and 

2) You should try turning on the Legacy Character Shaping Engine in the Preferences under Advanced Type to see if your Arabic compositon problems go away.

[Hatice Kübra T]

I’m not completely sure, but I think the font was custom-made for the person.

2) You should try turning on the Legacy Character Shaping Engine in the Preferences under Advanced Type to see if your Arabic compositon problems go away.

I tried it, and the spaces disappeared. I think I’ll need to rework all the old projects.

Thank you for your attention and responses.

[Joel Cherney]

I’m not completely sure, but I think the font was custom-made for the person.

Well, in that case there's little chance that either HarfBuzz would be updated to work with this font, or that this font would be updated to work with HarfBuzz. I imagine that you could just leave the legacy shaping engine on whenever you were working on this project; I don't expect that Adobe will yank it from InDesign anytime soon. 

the spaces disappeared.

After switching to the legacy shaping engine, did the diacritics go back to their magenta color, or are they still black? 

[Hatice Kübra T]

After switching to the legacy shaping engine, did the diacritics go back to their magenta color, or are they still black?

 Everything is in its place. The diacritics magenta

[Zaid Al Hilali]

• I knew that Adobe switched to a new Text Engine, however, I didn't know about this Preferences option that enables legacy text shaping. Thanks for sharing @Joel Cherney 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Hatice Kübra T

What platform, OS and InDesign versions? 

Are you using EN version or MENA version of InDesign? 

It's also possible, that your INDD file got corrupted - you can: 

- do IDMLing - export as IDML, open, save with a new name - do not overwrite your original file, 

- create a new, blank document with the same page size and margins and then move all pages from the old document to the new one. 

[Joel Cherney]

I have a previously prepared Arabic document. I’ve made the necessary corrections, but when I try to export it to PDF, the application crashes.

I'm guessing that you've received a translated INDD from some kind of language services provider, and you're trying to make a few edits in your English InDesign before exporting a final PDF, right? If that's the case, then the first order of business is to make sure that your English platform & your edits aren't causing the issue. Can you open up the Arabic INDD you were provided and make a PDF of that? If you can't - if you get the same crash that you get from trying to export PDF after making those edits - then you're best off trying to figure out why that file won't export to PDF. My favorite method of testing here is the "divide and conquer" method: if your doc is e.g. 100 pages long, then try exporting a PDF of just the first 50. Does it work? If so, you know the problem is in the last 50 pages. If it crashes, then you know the problem is in the first 50 pages. Try exporting the first 25 pages. If it doesn't crash, then you know that the problem is in pages 26 through 50. Sometimes, a single malformed page, or a single malformed object, can crash the PDF creation process.

Sometimes, though, it's not a single object that is the problem - it's the document itself that is corrupt, not a single page or a single frame or whatever. Two normal troubleshooting techniques are 1) to export IDML and reopen that, resave with a new name, and try to export PDF; or 2) move all of the pages of the document into a new empty file, as Robert suggests. But you can't use #2 if you're using plain-vanilla English InDesign, because  you can't start a right-to-left document with spine right and RTL page ordering.

So if you get stuck here, having already tried IDML export, I'd suggest going back to your LSP and saying "Hey, I can't make a PDF of this INDD that you provided. Can you re-export and redeliver?" Alternately you could try Robert's suggested method of moving pages; it won't leave you with a printable final file, it'll only prove that the problem lies upstream at the LSP. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to make you a new empty RTL file, if moving the pages fixes your corruption, but you can't go back to your LSP for whatever reason. 

If you're confident in your ability to handle editing and finalizing right-to-left documents, you could install your own "Middle East edition" of InDesign. If you go into the Creative Cloud app preferences, in the Apps section, there's a "Default install language" dropdown. Yours is most likely English, right? I honestly don't know if there's a Turkish localization of InDesign. But anyways, in that dropdown there's a choice for "English (Arabic)". If you confirm that choice and go back to your Apps section of the CC app, it will let you install another version of InDesign that has controls for all of the right-to-left features, including making a new InDesign document with proper RTL spreads and controls to choose spine-right or spine-left. 

[Hatice Kübra T]

Thanks again for your suggestions. I wanted to give some more details based on what I’ve experienced:

Some of the Arabic text in my document was originally written by us a long time ago—possibly back when we were using Adobe CS6, or maybe even earlier (I’m not completely sure). I only started having issues after switching to InDesign 2025.

More specifically, I noticed the problem when I copied and pasted some of the Arabic content—the formatting got messed up. So instead, I went back to an older version of the file, saved it again, retyped the Turkish text, and left the Arabic parts untouched (since they looked fine). Everything seemed okay until I tried exporting to PDF—that’s when the problem appeared.

As you suggested, I tried the “divide and conquer” method. It turned out that the pages containing Arabic text were the ones that failed to export to PDF. My layout has Turkish text on the left page and Arabic on the right page throughout the document.

I also tried exporting to IDML, but unfortunately it caused issues in the Arabic text—spacing got weird and some formatting broke.

For now, I found a temporary workaround by converting the Arabic text to outlines, which allowed me to export the file. But I never had this problem in earlier versions of InDesign, so I’m guessing something changed in the 2025 version that’s causing this.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Hatice Kübra T

Are you working on a Mac?

If yes - do you use ANY font manager? 

[Hatice Kübra T]

I use macbook m1 pro

I’m not using font manager. Can you recommend a font manager I can use?”

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

I use macbook m1 pro

I’m not using font manager. Can you recommend a font manager I can use?”

By @Hatice Kübra T

I asked because there are problems when people USE font managers on a Mac - especially Typeface app.

[Joel Cherney]

Edit: I still think that all of this stuff is valid but I don't think it actually will help you. Please refer to my message above regarding the legacy text shaping engine - that is, in fact, the thing that changed in the 2025 version that I suspect is causing this.

so I’m guessing something changed in the 2025 version that’s causing this.

---

Well, there have been many changes since "CS6, or maybe even earlier". So if you can go back to CC 2024 and export PDF without issue, there's good reason to suspect that there's a problem with something in CC 2025.  Likewise, you might want to try going back to CC 2024 and exporting IDML from there. Otherwise, I'd be inclined to suspect that the problem lies in your document's age and long service, not in recent changes made to CC 2025. 

Seeing this part of your response made me wonder:

I also tried exporting to IDML, but unfortunately it caused issues in the Arabic text—spacing got weird and some formatting broke.

That's... not a good sign for the health of your document. Files that have a long history (e.g. started in CS4, updated annually) tend to have corrpution problems. You can look at your document's history by clicking on Help in the top menu, then holding down Control (or, I think, Command on a Mac) while clicking "About InDesign". It will spawn a window that will show you, among other under-the-hood data, a complete save history of your document going back to when it was originally created. 

When you open up an older InDesign file in a new version of InDesign, some kinds of text frames will display correctly until they get edited, at which point InDesign needs to recompose the old text according to its new composition rules. This could be one possible cause of your PDF export problem. I personally wouldn't trust any document that couldn't be successfully exported to IDML. IDML export and reimport is one of the best tools available in InDesign for cleaning corruption out of old documents, so if it fails for you, you have to be ready to think about unpleasant possibilities like "converting all text to curves" or "rekeying all of the Arabic". But first, assuming you're still in CC 2025, I'd try to recompose all stories. it's an undocumented keyboard shortcut that forces all of the text frames to re-compose themselves according to current rules. The shortcut is command-option-/ on a Mac, or  ctrl-alt-/ on Windows.

If you're willing to share the document with me, I can try opening it up over here on my desktop to see if I can pinpoint exactly what is going on. I still have CC 2023 and CC 2024 installed, if you don't still have access to those versions of InDesign. You can send me a private message if you're willing to let me take a look. 

(You should be able to reinstall CC 2024 if you need to - in the Apps section of the Creative Cloud app, you can click on the ... on any app's tile, and in the context menu that opens up, "Other version" should appear, which will allow you to install the previous release of InDesign.")