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

Participant ,
Sep 12, 2021 Sep 12, 2021

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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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Bug , How to , Performance , Type

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Community Expert ,
Sep 12, 2021 Sep 12, 2021

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Participant ,
Sep 12, 2021 Sep 12, 2021

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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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Community Expert ,
Sep 12, 2021 Sep 12, 2021

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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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Participant ,
Sep 13, 2021 Sep 13, 2021

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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.

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Mentor ,
Sep 13, 2021 Sep 13, 2021

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This is abnormal behaviour. Connect with Adobe Support Chat

 

2021-09-09_13-26-05.png

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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Participant ,
Sep 27, 2021 Sep 27, 2021

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

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Mentor ,
Sep 28, 2021 Sep 28, 2021

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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

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Community Expert ,
Sep 13, 2021 Sep 13, 2021

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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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Participant ,
Sep 18, 2021 Sep 18, 2021

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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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Participant ,
Sep 18, 2021 Sep 18, 2021

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I shut down my Mac almost every night.

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Participant ,
Sep 18, 2021 Sep 18, 2021

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I have never done the cleanup scripts, never heard of them. Can you recommend a resource for someone like me with no experience in doing that? The info on this page is beyond me:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html#Anchor-Manually-49575

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Community Expert ,
Sep 19, 2021 Sep 19, 2021

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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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Participant ,
Sep 19, 2021 Sep 19, 2021

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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.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 19, 2021 Sep 19, 2021

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.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.

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Participant ,
Sep 19, 2021 Sep 19, 2021

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So, in other words, save the crashing INDD files as IDMLs, then right away save them back to INDDs with different names?

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Mentor ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Yes it is. This is magic pass to clean your publication from some things. Old wizardry 🙂

 

Use it this script for all files of your book coversion at once - https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/batch_convert.html

 

Some more info about .idml:

https://markzware.com/idmarkz/what-is-idml-whats-idml-file-adobe-indesign-markup-language/

 

 

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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New Here ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Thanks to you I finally found a solution to my problem. Since this morning at 8:00 am, I had tried to find a solution, but without result. I can now work on my file again. A very BIG THANK YOU

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Community Expert ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Which of the many things suggested did the trick?

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New Here ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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save it as an idml file and then resave it as an indd

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Participant ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Nothing has worked. Now I can't even open Indesign. It crashes even before it opens. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program several times too.

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Participant ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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I just managed to open Indesign without it freezing, and saved one file as a IDML, then resaved it as a INDD....working on it now, and will see what happens. Thx

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Participant ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Working on the file that I had saved as an IDML, then back to INDD...the formatting has changed...it does not look the same as my latest version of the INDD file...text has been bumped around...breaks are in the wrong places. Is that to be expected? I'd have to go back through and clean it up again.

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Participant ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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And, there are all sorts of weird colors and shapes overlapping the text and layout...

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Mentor ,
Sep 20, 2021 Sep 20, 2021

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Try to disable GPU acceleration in the settings. 

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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