InDesign CS5 will not "save" or "save as"

[darius93]

Hey.

So I've been working on this document for about an hour and I went in to save it for the first time, which I know is bad, the "save" and "save as" buttons are grayed out. I've tried looking through the preferences, and I've tried looking through the different modes I'm in but nothing is working.

The file is a web document and there is nothing special in it, just rectangles and a picture placed from a photoshop file, which I suspect is the problem. But InDesign lets me create a new file, any type, but once I do anything to the new file I again cannot save it at all. Some other glitches have been going on too, such as the hot corners have been buggy (not working sometimes) and when I drag a rectangle, the whole document fills with the color of the rectangle, making it impossible for me to get the positioning I want.

Lastly, I've been reading about clearing the preferences' cache and other things similar to that but I don't know if that is the solution. Also I would like to try to not restart InDesign before trying other ways because I've bee working on this file for a while. But if that's the only way I can get it to be working again, I do it.

Thanks.

[Lonzo2204]

Emma,

I feel your pain and understand the frustration. Since you can't save, go ahead and export as idml. Without quitting ID, open the recently created idml file. Check it out. Does it look like it should? Attempt to save. I'll be surprised if you can save, but at least you'll know the idml file is working. For added peace of mind, you can export multiple idml files -- naming each something different. Once you have some confidence that the idml files are good, take a deep breath and quit ID. Reboot computer and restart ID.

I'm pretty good about saving my documents frequently using keyboard commands. Problem is, ID is silent when it decides to stop saving. Now when saving, I watch my FILE tab to see that it flashes. Periodically, I use mouse and pull down FILE tab when I want to see it save. I never trust ID to save any more. I always check.

Good luck with your project.

[emmahunter2010]

thanks lonzo,

glad that you are going to work with the guy from Indesign.  hopefully we can get this resolved... it is soooo frustrating.  i managed to get my work in yesterday by printing to PDF , and then saving that...

tomorrow i will try the resetting... today i'm having some recovery time.

hope we get this resolved soon.

emma

[Lonzo2204]

Peter,

I have installed 7.03 update. Every couple of days, I check for updates -- hoping a fix will be included.

I've never heard of application hang. ID would issue "Crash Report" asking me to send to Adobe, so I figured it knew what it was talking about and had crashed. Since ID was reinstalled, crash issue hasn't returned -- just failure to save.

So, you don't use font management software. How do you manage that? How many fonts do you use?

[Peter Spier]

Lonzo2204 wrote:

So, you don't use font management software. How do you manage that? How many fonts do you use?

Well, it's just me so I don't need to coordinate a lot of fonts. I currently have 1087 fonts listed in the fonts folder (which obviously includes multiple weights and styles for many families, not that many distinct faces).  When I need another font, I install it manually, delete it manually when not needed. I should probably dump half of wht's curently installed, but a lot of them are for legacy files that I open once a year or so.

My favorite prepress tech got me into that -- he said he gave up on font managers years ago as they were totally unreliable, especially auto-activation. His method was to drag a folder with the client's job fonts into the system fonts folder while the job was active, then out again when done.

[BobLevine]

Years ago they were and for us Windows users they were somewhere between useless and dangerous.

But I'll repeat my praise for Extensis Suitcase Fusion 3. It's changed the way I work.

Bob

[Peter Spier]

One of the issues for the prepress tech, even with modern managers, was that there was no real way to control exactly which Helvetica or Frutiger was going to open when 25 different clients used the same fonts, but potentially different versions, unless you hid all the ones you didn't want from the manager, and then there was no point in using it since you'd have to go through hiding and making available a differnt set of fonts for each job, so you might as well do it manually.

For an idividual who works with just their own set, that's maybe not an issue, but I can't say I miss having a manager.

[Lonzo2204]

We had several different versions of Suitcase Fusion, depending on which version was being sold when a computer was installed. And each designer seemed to have different versions of same font which created problems when the work station opening the file was different from previously used work station. With Universal Type software, master set of fonts is stored on the server. When I purchase and install a new font, UTS (Universal Type Server) pushes it to every work station. So, everyone has same fonts all the time. It's been a pain at the beginning, because every time a file is opened for the first time, UTC (Universal Type Client) makes us select the font. But as time goes by, UTC connects the font to the file and the file looks the same regardless of work station used.

[Lonzo2204]

Forgot to mention -- no third party ID plug-ins.

[Lonzo2204]

Three days ago, I upgraded to CS5 on new MacBook Pro. I, too, have documents that cannot "save" or "save as." First time it happened (two days ago), I pulled down Updates from website and thought the problem was solved. Tonight, it happened again.

Documents are part of long term complex project created in CS3 -- too complex to export. My only option is to repeatedly lose my changes, reboot and restart. Is Adobe working on the fix to this programming glitsch?

[Peter Spier]

Unless they tell us, which they usuallly don't nobody here knows anything more than you about what sorts bugs have been reported and might be in develpoment for solution. This is not a commonly reported problem here, by the way, which doesn't help you, but means there's a good chance the issue is on your system rather than in the application.

The best advice for a complex project begun in CS3 would be to finish in CS3, but it's probably too late for that if you've alread converted any files. Going back requires export from cs5 to .idml. opening that in CS4 and exporting to .inx and opening that in CS3. There are quite a few reports of less-than-stellar performance of legacy files opened and converted in CS5, and I generally at this point recommend exporting .inx or .idml form the original application and opening that in CS5 rather than opening the .indd as it seems to have a better track record.

The next best option, if you can't work with the original versions any longer, is to export to .idml in CS5 and save that as a new .indd. That might be a pain in the neck for your project, but it has to be better than losing your work. Save everything with new names so you don't overwrite any existing files.

[Lonzo2204]

I exported one chapter (of 11) as .idml, opened and saved as .indd. It worked well. New .indd file "saved" ok with minor changes. But then, my updated CS5 .indd files "saved" for two days after first experiencing problem. Time will tell. What does exporting as .idml do to the file? At the time I exported, I was able to "save" and "save as" (having already rebooted and restarted). Is new .indd file different than if I had "saved" or "saved as" without the .idml export?

Regarding suggestion that problem is with my system, rather than CS -- new computer, fresh install. OS Leopard to Snow Leopard and CS3 to CS5 most significant changes.

Are software developers aware that "a few of us" have been experiencing this issue?

[Peter Spier]

Lots of things that are system related can have strange effects, like your choice of browser or running an instant messenger, or security software for your bank. It's very hard to say without doing extensiove diagnostic testing with a file that is known to fail consistently. Even brand new systems can have software conflicts or even hardware problems.

Exporting to .idml reduces the file to the bare essentials needed to rebuild on another system, and in the process can sometimes remove minor corruptions that might no be serious enough to keep a file from opeing, but will cause it to behave badly. It doesn't always work, and my impression is it works better if done from the version of InDesign that created the file, rather than doing it in CS5 on the conversion, but that's beter than not trying at all. CS3 files seem to me to be reported here more often than other versions as not behaving well when converted to CS5.

As far as what the developers know, I couldn't say, but I suspect they have some idea. Clearly this did not show up in the beta testing, though, or they would definitely have fixed the problem before release (another reason to suspect it might be system-related). If you have a file that you can copy (so you are working with a copy rather than risking any real work) which demonstrates this lack of savability each time you try to work with it, you should file a bug report at Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form describing very carefully waht you ahve done and your system, including what other programs might be open, and offer to submit the file for testing.

[Lonzo2204]

Thank you for the additional informaton.

Background: I own a printing company and employ three graphic designers. I'm testing CS5 for our company on my new MacBook Pro. Only software open on this computer: CS5, Safari, Mail and Extensis font management software, also Time Machine to automatically back up changed files each hour. I operate a second, older computer for CS3 and all other programs because all designers and I must be able to access customer files interchangably and I didn't want to throw other programs into the mix while testing CS5. So, there's not a lot of extraneous software running to cause a conflict.

I'll stop bothering you and submit Bug Report if problem persists.

Thank you.

[BobLevine]

Which font manager?

Bob

[Peter Spier]

Many versions of Suitcase are known to cause trouble in InDesign.

[Lonzo2204]

I'm back -- previously could not "save" or "save as." When that happened (and it happened quite frequently -- 20 or 30 times), I was able to export IDML and open IDML file without problem. Now when I attempt to export as either pdf or IDML, InDesign crashes.

It says:

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)

Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000

Crashed Thread:  28

This has happened repeatedly (8 to 10 times in the last two days). I have submitted crash reports to Adobe.

What's going on? What can I do to fix? I've already reset my preferences.

Only software running (beside InDesign and Acrobat) Font Management - Universal Type Client and Safari.

Thank you.

[Nini Tjader]

Check that your fonts are OK.

Check permissions.

Check that harddisk is OK.

[Peter Spier]

Could easily be a problem with a font, or the font manager. Perhaps even a safari plugin.

For some solutions that have worksed for others, see KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000

[Lonzo2204]

I thought it could be font related also, but it wasn't. At least the first issue in the file wasn't font. It's a 44 page document. I deleted every page except 1 and exported ok. Closed without saving, opened and deleted every page except 1 and 2, then exported again. And so on until pages 1 to 15 would export. Then crash started on page 16. The problem was an empty rectangle surrounding 3 columns of text. Rectangle had black 1 point stroke. Deleted the rectangle and replaced with new one, and it exported ok. Moved on by adding page 17 - exported ok. Then page 18 causes crash again. Isolated to a block of text with 1 point black stroke (around the box -- not the text). Is something going on with stroke pallet?

[Peter Spier]

Did you trah your prefs? Hard to know why a frame would get corrupt.

[Lonzo2204]

I followed your instructions to quit CS5 then restarted while holding down command, option, control and shift keys. Got box about new prefs. Still had crash issue. That's when I began process of examining every page. Problem on page 16 was empty rectangle with stroke. Page 18 worked when I created new boxes without strokes. I kept adding pages until I got to 23 - still not crashing. Then I remembered that I'd forgotten to add strokes to boxes back on page 18. When I added 1 pt stroke to two boxes simultaneously, ID crashed immediately -- not when attempting to export. Reopened and added strokes one at a time to the two boxes, didn't crash and can export up to page 23. Still working through rest of document to figure out which elements are causing crash.

[Helen Stutchbury]

I've been working on a 60 page document that hasn't been able to save, save as, create a copy, command Z or frankly, anything useful that makes me feel my work is going to be safe. I'm not willing to crash it and risk re-opening to find everything I've created is gone.

I've got the .idml files here, and when I first open it up, it will allow me to save/save as, but as soon as I click into a text box to make changes, it's back to being greyed out.

I'm afraid to shut down, I'm afraid to lose everything and how is this software supposed to be a useful business tool if I end up spending 2 - 3 times the time it takes to build the thing trying to figure out how to make it save.

[Peter Spier]

Your .idml files should be safe. They open as a new Untitled document (essentially a copy) so anthing you are doing currently is not affecting the files you exported to disk. I know this is very scary, but all evidence here points to a force quit and prefs replacement as the best option.

[emmahunter2010]

Peter, Do you work for Adobe?  Can I be talked through what I need to do.  I'm a bit rubbish with technology and struggling with the idea of resetting all my preferences... I can see there is a preferences option, but it does not seam to have anything that would appear to effect the saving of files...is there a no. i can call to be directed?  I've not been on indesign since I had to loose my work... I've got a pdf copy of it but not an in-design version.  I know the next time I use it I will come across the same problem and feel v. annoyed/ frustrated with it being such a fundamental error with what is v. expensive software...

hope you can help.

emma.

[Peter Spier]

Hi Emma,

I'm just a volunteer, with a fair amount of experience.

Replacing your preferences is different from editing them. You do it with InDesign closed and the program will make a new set with the original settings from a new install (which you'll want to re-customize) when it restarts. This is pretty straightforward and usually fixes strange behavior. Some users find they need to do it with some regularity, others practically never, and it seems to be related as much to what else is running on your computer, and how you use it, as anything else. If any of us knew something specific that would cause prefs to go bad, believe me we'd tell the world.

Complete details, including a simple method using the keyboard as you start InDesign (for users who are scared to delete or rename files on their own) can be found in this link: Replace Your Preferences

Peter