Inspiring

Question

InDesign keeps crashing and I have lost ability to edit using Command Y

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 12, 2021
9 replies
3682 views

I have been working in InDesign on this particular project for three years. InDesign crashes pretty consistently during work, at least once a day, and it is a real pain, but I have gotten used to it, and gotten in the habit of hitting save after every single change I make. Today is different. It crashed once, twice, three times, and now I have lost all editing functionality in the Command Y editorial window. The initial crashes mostly occurred while scrolling, mostly by swiping my finger on the Apple bluetooth mouth. For some reason, the Command Y editorial window just cannot handle scrolling, which is a real pain because when you are editing a document, you have to be able to scroll. Now, when I restart InDesign, and try to start editing again by pressing Command Y, the editorial window does not even appear whatsoever. Command Y no longer does anything, at all, nothing. I have the latest version of Indesign and Mac ios. I have tried reinstalling the program from CC before when scrolling crashes have happened in the past, but it doesn't help. Something is seriously wrong with either my computer or InDesign that it keeps crashing like this. Does anyone have any idea how I can just reset my whole system so that InDesign might start working without crashing? Thanks, Tom

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

This is happening again, but way worse than before. I open Indesign, I open a file, I go to where I am editing, I hit Command-Y for the story editor, and the program disappears from the screen. I have deleted/reset preferences, I have saved the file as IDML and back to INDD, and I have tried a dozen times to edit this document always with the same result.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Made any other changes to hardwarte or software recently?

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

No changes

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alexweefs

Participant

Whilst InDesign is generally pretty stable I do sometimes come across people who have an issue with InDesign crashing repeatedly. There are a few things you can do to stop this, other than simply reinstalling InDesign.

RESTART THE MACHINE

OK it sounds kind of obvious, but one thing you could do it restart the computer itself. Generally this won’t resolve the problem but I have come across situations where it has. It’s worth a go and only takes a few minutes.

RESET THE PREFERENCES

The next thing which I usually try is resetting the InDesign preferences. This does wipe any customisation so if you have personalised workspaces, etc.. they will be wiped. Having said that it generally does fix recurring crashes in InDesign (and Photoshop / Illustrator). In fact personally I find this method has worked almost everytime over many years.

To reset the preferences simply restart InDesign and hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Windows) or Cmd + Ctrl + Opt + Shift (Mac). After a few seconds you should then get a pop up box that asks if you want to reset the preferences.

Personally I find this fixes almost all my crashing issues.

The downside of this is it wiped your personal settings, including document and print presets, so I would suggest synching whatever settings you can to the cloud first to save a bit of time.

That way if doing this doesn’t solve the problem you can always restore the preferences.

You can also save and then reload things like print presets and document presets by going into them from the file menu and clicking define then saving them.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

If you don't mind my asking, how big is this project document you've been working on for the last three years? Is it a single file? Without discussing the content, what kind of document is it? How many pages are in it? Does it have lots of placed graphics in it?

In short, could the file just be to danged big for your system? What kind of Mac have you got? How much RAM? And how much available storage?

You've got a bunch of folks here who want to help. As you can share more about what you've got and what you're working on, we can better help you quickly find your way past your issues.

Happy to help,

Randy

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Randy...I'm working on a book. There are 16 chapters. Each chapter is an Indesign file. The files range in size from 10 to 30 mb. There are between 20 and 80 pages in each. The book has about 600 images, but they are all linked, not embedded.

My iMac is a 2017, 27-inch monitor. 3.8 GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5 processor; 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM; 1.35TB of 2.12TB is available...running BigSur 11.5.2.

I have looked into hiring a local person to come run some tests on the hardware to see if anything is bad.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

It seems you have an adequate system for running InDesign. The files are large, and as suggested in other responses, you may choose the InDesign document (.indd) saved as an InDesign Markup Language interchange file (.idml) to clean out the digital jetsam that accumulates with InDesign files worked with continuously over time. It saves the original, problematic files and creates a refined and (in the background, not for the page content) redefined file that you can then re-save as a new InDesign file. Be sure, though to name them so you know the difference between the new files and the old ones.

It's a solid, safe and well-established InDesign workflow.

If that doesn't help, you may find that further sub-dividing your chapters may offer some relief. I've produced catalog files, where clients want you to provide "minor updates" (as if!) to their existing files rather than create new ones. With lots of graphics and separate, discrete text blocks for each item, over time they become problematic. Because 600 images generally turns into 600 separate, discrete captions to describe them, etc. The files show down and become unmanageable over time and countless additions/deletions/revisions/updates. If you're working with them the whole time, they seem to slow down and respond sluggishly. When someone presents you with files they've been working with for years because "they're not working right" and they ask for your help, they seem to fall apart and crash your systems out of the blue.

Experiment with taking one of the smaller chapters you're working on. Try first breaking it in half, then work with each half independently. See if that gives you an improvement. If it does, lather/rinse/repeat as necessary for the remaining files. It will be a tedious, teeth-gnashing process to break those chapters into smaller files, then stitch them back together using InDesign's Book functions (link provided, for benefit of anyone who may be new to this process). Hopefully that will help you even more.

Good luck,

Randy

Peter Spier

Community Expert

I'll second what Derek has said about "recycling" documents and incremental failure, but that should be limited to the particular document, not brand new work.

Back in the old days when I worked with Macs on various jobs (I'm primarily a Windows user) we would use a freeware program called Cocktail to perform maintenance functions. It's been around for more than 20 years and is reliable, but sadly no longer free ($19 for a single license) but there does seem to be a limited trial period for unlicensed use.

https://www.maintain.se/cocktail/

Make sure if you decide to try it you use the version that matches your OS version.

There is no guarantee this will solve the problem, of course. If it's bad hardware nothing short of replacing the bad component will work. Here's an article on memory testing for Macs: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/check-memory-mac/

If you feel this is beyond you, I urge you to enlist a helper.

If memory tests OK and repairing permissions doesn't seem to help it may be time to uninstall and reinstall ID. I would run the CC Cleaner tool before reinstalling: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

Derek Cross

Community Expert

InDesign documents build up “crud” over a long period and will cause problems. To clear these from the document save it as an IDML document, and rename it, close and reopen it.
By the way, I assume you've made incrementally named copies (for example, name-v1a.indd, name-v1b.indd and so on) of your document and saved them externally as well as internally.

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Derek. With the IDML files, can I do everything I can do with the INDD files? Should I just keep them in IDML form through the whole publication process?...even when I create my final PDFs for print? Or should I save them back to INDD form at some point? Yes, I have snapshots of every file I am working on every time it changes hands from one worker to another...ie., dozens of prior versions.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

.idml is an interchange format (and a useful tool for stipping a file to its bare essentials and removing built-up crud), and it is not a "working" format. It will open as an "untitiled" document in ID and you'll have to save as a new .indd. Us a new name so you don't overwrite the previous file.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Some of this could also be hardware related. Have you let the Mac OS cleanup scripts run recently? Do you have sufficient hard drive space? If the crashing can be triggered by some consistent action it could indicate a bad memory module.

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

Peter...I think you must be correct...because no matter what solution I have tried from above, Indesign keeps crashing regularly, sometimes for specific reasons, like during scrolling, other times just out of the blue while I'm not doing anything. I have never let Mac OS cleanup scripts run. I have a big hard drive.

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

I shut down my Mac almost every night.

Geоrge

Legend

This is abnormal behaviour. Connect with Adobe Support Chat

Remember, never say you can't do something in InDesign, it's always just a question of finding the right workaround to get the job done. © David Blatner

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

I have not been able to reach anyone using the chat box, or receive any assistance, as that is just a robot.

Geоrge

Legend

There are a real people in this chat too. Just ask that terminator from cyberdine to have a talk with a real man.

Remember, never say you can't do something in InDesign, it's always just a question of finding the right workaround to get the job done. © David Blatner

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

In addition to Mike's advice to reset your preferences you can make a clean sweep of resetting the program by also trashing your InDesign cache files.

To do this on a Mac:

The User Library folder in which InDesign’s cache files are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that InDesign is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N). With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the “Caches” folder. Within the Caches folder find and delete the entire folder “Adobe InDesign”. I find that deleting the InDesign cache folder completely leads to a lasting change.

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

Bill, I deleted the cache files as you suggested. Command Y works again and there were no crashes today! However, there were other weird behaviors like delayed appearance of text after typing it, by sometimes as much as a minute, and only after I changed Indesign tools. When the text I typed finally appeared, it appeared in a different location than the cursor's location. (This happened only in the command-Y story-editing window, so I ended up editing on the story directly, then it was fine, except I had to command-Y back and forth a bunch to see my editor's notes.) But anything beats crashing.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Chances are you will need to reset preferences.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/reset-indesign-preferences-and-other-troubleshooting/m-p/11990234#M423408

Mike Witherell

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tturianoAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Mike. I tried that and it helped for about 1.5 hours, then Ind crashed again while scrolling. When it crashes, Indesign just disappears off the screen in an instant. Going to try deleting cache files now.

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