InDesign - need a "Fix my Corrupted File" Upload Service

Report · Oct 18, 2007

There are frequently posts on the forum for people who have corrupted INDD files. This means lost work and frustrated InDesign users.

The Indesign team should offer a "Fix my File" upload link to its customers.

For each corrupted file, you will help a customer, and in the process, hopefully improve the overall stability of the product (which has issues) and benefit everyone...

Adobe: If you are afraid that you will be swamped with requests to "Fix my File", then you should probably just get out of the SW business now...

Report · Jul 01, 2008

Kevin:

Zak is indeed still here, but this is a good opportunity to let everyone know that he has passed responsibility for investigating corrupt documents on to me. Please send me any corrupt files you have along any information you think would help me reproduce the corruption.

If your file is small enough for email, you can send them directly to me. As Zak has mentioned in the past, if the files are sent as .zip attachments, youll need to remove the file extension in order to get the files through Adobes e-mail filters.

As a reminder, please continue to submit crash reports. On the Macintosh, please include your e-mail address with crash reports. Doing so will allow me to match up your document with a crash, and will give me more information to work with.

Thank you,
Tommy

Tommy Donovan
Development Project Lead
InDesign Product Family
Adobe Systems, Inc.

ADOBE NOTE: Tommy is on another project and is no longer the contact point. Please send corrupt documents or crash reports to corrupt_indesign_docs@adobe.com

Report · Oct 07, 2009

Tommy,

I just email a corrupt InDesign file to you via email (tomdonov@adobe.com).

Can you see if you can recover this corrupt file? The file was created in InDesign but will no longer open in InDesign and

gets the following error message listed below. The file is named “Annual_Report.indd” in a zipped folder named

“Corrupt InDesign file.zip” You will need to add .zip on the end.

Error message:

“Cannot open the file “Annual_Report.indd”. Adobe

InDesign may not support the file format, a plug-in

That supports the file format may be missing, or the

File may be open in another application.

Thanks,

--

William Jackson III

Report · Oct 07, 2009

The error you are seeing is typical of what happens when you try to open a file created or saved in a later version of InDesign than the one you are using. Doesn't mean it isn't corrupt, but check the obvious, first.

Report · Oct 07, 2009

Peter,

The file was created in InDesign CS3 and I tried to open it in the same

version. Can you repair it or is there a plug-in I need to get that can open

it?

William

From: Peter Spier <forums@adobe.com>
Reply-To: <clearspace-1093129764-521910-2-2298654@mail.forums.adobe.com>
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:55:47 -0600
To: William Jackson <william.jackson@kbslp.com>
Subject: InDesign - need a "Fix my Corrupted File"
Upload Service
The error you are seeing is typical of what happens when you try to open a
file created or saved in a later version of InDesign than the one you are
using. Doesn't mean it isn't corrupt, but check the obvious, first.

>

Report · Oct 07, 2009

I have no way to repair a corrupt file that won't open. Are you sure nobody has worked on this file in CS4 and saved it?

I hesitate to say the file isn't corrupt and giving this message becasue I actually saw two corrupt files this week that behaved exactly that way, but up until then I'd have said with conviction that it was a CS4 file. You can mail me the file at spammercatch at comcast dot net and I can tell if it's CS4 or corrupt. If CS4 I'll export to .inx and save again in CS3.

Peter

Report · Oct 07, 2009

Ok, I forwarded the file to you at spammercatch@comcast.net.

Thanks

William

Report · Oct 07, 2009

bro i think you sent this to the wrong person i believe you want to send this to

tomdonov@adobe.com

Report · Oct 07, 2009

Sorry, thanks.

--

William Jackson III

From: zangetsu Bankai <forums@adobe.com>
Reply-To: <clearspace-1093129764-521910-2-2298635@mail.forums.adobe.com>
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:57:34 -0600
To: William Jackson <william.jackson@kbslp.com>
Subject: InDesign Feature Requests InDesign - need a "Fix my Corrupted File"
Upload Service
bro i think you sent this to the wrong person i believe you want to send this
to
mailto:tomdonov@adobe.com

>

Report · Oct 07, 2009

William,

Would you mind killing your email signature when responding to the forums? Thanks.

Report · Oct 07, 2009

I did send this to tomdonov@adobe.com.

Report · Oct 07, 2009

zangetsu Bankai wrote:
bro i think you sent this to the wrong person i believe you want to send this to
tomdonov@adobe.com

Are you subscribed to the thread? Everyone who's subscribed gets all the posts...

Report · Jul 09, 2008

Hi Tommy,
I've just sent a file on to you. It's about a days worth of lovely typesetting work! I've no idea why the file is corrupted, Indesign just quit on me and just continues to quit whenever I try to reopen or recover the file.
This is the second time this has happened to me in the last month, but the first time I just got on recreating it as the deadline was too close.

If you could do anything with the file, it would save me another day of boredom

Cheers

Matt

Report · Jul 09, 2008

If all else fails, we are seeing about a 95% success rate in fixing corrupted or bad InDesign files with this general method here:

http://docufix.wordpress.com/

Since we are still finalizing our FixIt Plugin to make this process simpler for you, in the mean time, we will try to fix your file for free. Just email me on david AT markzware dOT nl and I will get you the FTP details on where to upload (or just email the document if it is less than 10MB).

Friendly Regards,
David Dilling
Markzware

Report · Jul 10, 2008

Hi David, just to let you know if you didn't already...!

I'd already emailed the file to the markzware pr email address and Arnold kindly fixed my file after Adobe told me they were unable to recover it.

Thanks again to Markzware!

Looking forward to the final FixIt Plugin.

Matt

Report · Jul 14, 2008

FYI: I uploaded a corrupted indesign document to the mentioned Adobe ftp server. The file name is "FaszUVerantw_Brosch_19_defekt.indd" (sorry for not zipping it).

The file crashed after an editor has done lots of tiny text changes and save actions in this 152 pages document. No objects/content was added literally spoken but changed only. The corrupted file has 124 MB wheras 114 MB before the changes/saves, means the corrupted version appears to contain 10 MB data garbadge.

Meanwhile the document was restored with the tools from Markzware.

> Looking forward to the final FixIt Plugin.
Agree.

regards,
thomas

Report · Jul 14, 2008

Thomas:

Thank you for providing your file. My initial investigation suggests that you hit the Save As document corruption that was fixed in 5.0.2, but the corruption is a different pattern than those I've seen before for that case. I will continue looking into it and let you know definitively as soon as I can.

Tommy Donovan
InDesign Development
Adobe Systems

Report · Jul 15, 2008

Thomas:

After further investigation, I can now conclude that your corruption was actually not caused by the Save As bug. Instead, it was caused outside of InDesign, probably by faulty hardware.

Every time InDesign writes data to the hard disk, we calculate and record a checksum for that data. When InDesign later reads that same data from the disk, it verifies that the data is good by recalculating the checksum and confirming that we get the same number.

Some of your data failed this test, which indicates that there was faulty media somewhere in your workflow. Typically, this is a bad sector on your harddisk, but it could also be a faulty thumbdrive. Occasionally, this problem can be caused by a bad file transfer or a bug in file backup software. I recommend running some disk utilities on your harddisk as a precaution.

Although I believe you have already recovered the file, I was also able to recover it by tweaking things in my development environment and then exporting the file to INX. If you'd like a copy of the INX file, please send your email address to me at tomdonov@adobe.com, and I'll reply with the INX file as an attachment.

Thanks again for sharing your document.

Tommy Donovan
InDesign Development
Adobe Systems, Inc.

Report · Aug 12, 2008

PDF2ID Product did not perform as advertised. It will only convert the SIMPLEST of ID documents to something that can be used. Any transparent images, multiple images over other images, many text boxes, FORGET IT! It creates a MESS!!!

I went back in forth with customer service via email,.. In the end only to be be told too bad, no refund.

DONT BUY IT!!!

Report · Aug 29, 2008

Last night, at the eleventh hour of a major project, my (Windows XP, CS2) INDD catastrophically crashed. (Luckily I had an exported PDF from a few hours earlier in the day that myself and two others worked with until the wee hours in order to meet an 11:00am deadline today.) Now Im into the post mortem and trying to figure out what happened.

I was working over a network, (as I have standardly done for 8 years now). I was in the process of placing JPGs (that I had color corrected the prior evening on my [Intel-based, Leopard] Mac [Photoshop CS3] at home), and it suddenly went down, with this error: Indesign.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close

Auto-recovery of all types failed, no one else had been able to open it since, and there is a ghosted Lock file still with it in the folder. The .INDD file itself is just over 11mb.

Also, subsequent restarting of InDesign resulted in random shutdowns of the whole program again or inability to open some docs, some of the time, but other times the same docs would open.

What is Adobes response? Is there an Adobe Tech I can go over this with, to help prevent a future occurrence, etc? Please advise, thank you.

Report · Aug 29, 2008

There was an issue with saving/working with Photoshop files over a network with Leopard 10.5.3 that they fixed (I've heard) in 10.5.4. Other than that I don't know of any bugs.

You can delete the ghosted lock file (which is probably the reason it won't open). If you can't get to it in Explorer then try a utility that will let you view invisible files. Or you might need to unlock the lock file via right-clicking and fiddling around with Properties, that might allow you to delete it.

Re InDesign flakiness, rebuild its preferences, and go into your cache folder and delete the Recovery Data folder/files. I'm not sure where the Adobe InDesign Cache folder is in Windows ... try searching for Cache (include locked/system files).

See if any of that will help you open the document.

It sounds like a horrible random network problem to me, one that just caught you in its sights.

AM

Report · Aug 29, 2008

Hi Tania:

Im sorry to hear about your lost work.

I suspect the network connection dropped out on you while you were editing the document. When this happens, because InDesign has lost access to the document, it will shut down in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the document. In this situation, the expectation is that a subsequent recovery will get you back to a recent version of your document. Under most circumstances, this is exactly what happens and the work is saved.

Unfortunately, we have seen occasional instances where last data InDesign has asked the OS file system to write out to disk before the network connection is lost never actually gets written out. This can result in truncated documents that are corrupted. Id be interested in taking a look at your file to confirm that this was the case for you.

You can send it to me directly at: tomdonov@adobe.com. Or, if it is a large file, you can upload it to our FTP server. Here are instructions for our FTP server:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402038

These instructions include a step that talks about creating a folder with a case number. Instead of a case number, please give the folder a unique name and then email me to let me know the files are there.

Thanks,
Tommy Donovan
Development Project Lead
InDesign Development
Adobe Systems, Inc.

Report · Jun 24, 2009

Folks:

A quick update: We have a new FTP server at Adobe.

As usual, if you run into corrupt files and the file is small enough (say, less than 15MB), you can send it to me directly at: tomdonov@adobe.com.

However, if it is a large file, please upload it to our FTP server:

FTP: //eftp.adobe.com
User: cust-ul
Password: Upt0wn (the 0 is a zero)
Please create a uniquely named folder, upload your file to it, and then email me to let me know when the file has been uploaded

Thanks,
Tommy Donovan
Development Project Lead
InDesign Development
Adobe Systems, Inc.

Report · Aug 21, 2009

Hi,

I shall be requiring your sevices.

Report · Jul 05, 2010

I'm reviving this thread in the hopes I can get a damaged IDCS4 (Mac) file looked at.

It's larger than 10MB (35MB zipped) and I've tried logging into the eftp.adobe.com ftp site, but it won't let me make a new directory or upload a file.

Are Adobe still interested in examining damaged files?

This file was being worked on (but not in the process of being saved, just open in InDesign) when the network went offline and killed the server connection.

Even if it's not possible to recover this file, I'd really like to see InDesign be able to handle something like a file that's on disk not get corrupted when the app unexpectedly quits, or drops it's connection to the storage media...

Cheers,
Kai

Report · Jul 05, 2010

If you lose the connection or power during a write operation you're dreaming if you think any program can gracefully handle it without any sort of loss. ID is actually among the best at recovery. I do wish you luck, though.