Indesign CS4 Screens Coming up Blank

[Jaycee_2792]

I have had adobe creative suite 4 for years and have never really had any problems with it. I hadn't used indesign in a while and went to open it the other day, only to find the new document screen coming up blank. I can open a new document by pressing enter, but the document screen is squished over in the corner where I can't click on it, and so I can't edit any documents. Kind of hard to explain properly, but the screenshots below should illustrate what I'm talking about. The first one shows what the document looks like in the top left corner. When I click on it, it pulls up the entire program, which covers the document itself so I can't edit it. The second one shows the blank new document screen.

I tried reinstalling, which didn't make a difference. Please help!!

[Jeff A Wright]

Moving this discussion to the InDesign forum.

[BobLevine]

Sounds like you’re on High Sierra. CS4 is not supported.

If that’s the case, roll back to a much earlier operating system, upgrade to Creative Cloud or explore alternative applications.

[Bill Silbert · Accepted solution]

If this is not a case of trying to run CS4 on High Sierra then I would suggest trashing your preferences and also your InDesign cache files.

To trash preferences:

For Macintosh Users: With InDesign closed Launch a Finder Window in column view and click on your home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. Within the Library folder find the folder called Preferences and within it find the following two files and delete them: “Adobe InDesign” and “com.adobe.InDesign.plist”. When InDesign is next launched it will create new preference files and the program will be restored to its defaults.

For Windows Users: You can try the quick way of resetting on a PC which is to hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift when launching InDesign and respond affirmatively when asked if you want to reset. There have been some recent reports that the window asking if you want to reset is not popping up but that the prefs are being reset anyway. If this works great but if it doesn’t you may have to manually delete them.

To do so:

On Windows 7 and above the preference files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\<Version #>\<Language>. Make sure that InDesign is closed when you do this. When you relaunch the program it will create  new preference files and the program will be at its default settings.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files 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.

To delete Cache files:

For Macintosh Users: With InDesign closed launch a Finder Window in column view and click on your home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. Within the Library folder find the “Caches” folder. Within the Caches folder find and delete the entire file “Adobe InDesign”. I find that deleting the cache file completely leads to a lasting change. 

For Windows Users: On Windows 7 and above the caches files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign\Version [#]\<Language>\Cache.

[Michelangelo23817154303w]

No way for me Bill... everything is erased (everything i could find) but the windows still blank.

The file was missing com.adobe.InDesign.plist but even after restarting indesign no file will be created.
The CS4 Design Premium works perfectly, but no way to keep indesign working properly, the windows still blank

[BobLevine]

You just answered a FIVE YEAR OLD post. CS4 is ancient software and you'll need ancient hardware to run it on. This post was answered years ago and I'm going to lock it.