Indesign closes after copy paste

[Tatiane23208074f82j]

Hi, there

I'm using  Indesign 19.4 on Windows 11, but I'm unable to copy a text from Word and paste it on the text frame. Indesign just freeze for a few seconds and then it closes itself. Then I open Indesign again, click on the 

recovery file, try to copy and paste the same text, but it keeps closing. 

I tried Ctrl + D to import the .docx, but when I apply a paragraph style to the text, Indesign closes again. 

[Derek Cross]

It might be worth resetting the preferences which you can do under the General tab in inDesign Preferences 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Besides bad prefs or cache, I'd suspect a corrupted DOCX file.

Create a simple DOCX file with a few pages of text. Does it place without crashing ID?

[Tatiane23208074f82j]

Unfortunately, it didn't work. I uninstalled and reinstalled Indesign, tried the previous version 19.3, and nothing could solve this issue.

The .docx file is not corrupted, by the way. It has 14 pages, most of its contents it's just text and two tables. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Both Word and InDesign files can be corrupted and show no sign of it until you try to do certain operations on/with them. Choking on ID import is a common sign of a broken Word file.

Next question, is it a genuine Word file, from Word? Or an export from Pages, Google Docs, etc.? (Third-party Word docs are often not compliant with things like import and conversion, even if Word or any Word clone will open them.) The solution here is to open the file in a genuine copy of Word and save it under a new name to DOCX, DOC and RTF to maximize successful import options.

Even if it's a genuine Word file, save it under a new name to RTF, then open that and save to DOC and DOCX. (That often purges data bloat and corrupted doc structure). Repeat the import process. It's always preferable to use the Place function instead of cut and paste, even for short docs. Be sure to open the import options file on Place (there's a small checkbox in the file window) to see a variety of import options.

Also: reinstalling ID doesn't necessarily fix a corrupted prefs or cache. Both can be fixed without a reinstallation, but if you uninstall, there is "scrubbing" you should do before reinstalling, or you'll often see the same problems recur.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Unfortunately, it didn't work. I uninstalled and reinstalled Indesign, tried the previous version 19.3, and nothing could solve this issue. 

By @Tatiane23208074f82j

Reinstallation won't help - you need to reset preferences. 

[Tatiane23208074f82j]

I tried several times resetting preferences, converting the docx into rtf, but all these options didn't work for me.  Opened a new file, tried Ctrl + D again, but the moment I started applying text and paragraph styles the issue continues. 

I had to install Indesign 2023 in order to finish my work

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Something is being overlooked here. Importing Word can have its rough edges, most of which are solved by the above suggestions, but I can't say as I've ever encountered a file that crashed ID and resisted all attempts to fix it. Frustrating.