InDesign Undo history clears itself without user action

[bernd_9382]

Undo steps disappear automatically while working.
Undo history resets to ~3 entries without any undo action being triggered.

This happens reproducibly every ~10 seconds.

Preflight is disabled.

Reproducible in:
- new documents
- local files (no cloud documents)
- fresh installs
- multiple machines

Windows 11.
Photoshop is not affected.

please help : (

[leo.r]

I'm having the exact same issue on my Windows machine. Any updates?

By @Surfshred

What's your InDesign version? I saw at least one report that updating to 21.1 solved the issue.

[michaelh35470858]

I'm using Windows also. No updates. How long does it take the geniuses at Adobe to fix a major problem that shouldn't have been released? It slowed down layout for my January issue and I'm starting on February now, and the same problem.

[heidi_7321]

Dec 30, 2025 - half a month after the original post was made and STILL no update. Such a major issue within InDesign for there to be no fix yet.

[eb30205326]

Any update? Its really hard to work like this. 

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @eb30205326,

Thanks for checking in. I want to let you know that this issue is still under active investigation by the product team. I'll keep this thread updated as soon as I have any new information to share.

Thank you for your patience while the team works on this.

Abhishek

[Rania Gk]

Suddenly, I can't Undo more than 2 times.
Can anyone think of why this might be happening?
For me, it was very useful to be able to Undo during design.
The fact that I can't do it more than 2 times has caused me various problems.

I hope for your immediate help

[Mike Witherell]

Hi raniag,

Just lately, others are reporting the same possible bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-undo-history-clears-itself-without-user...

But I am not reading about a definitive answer yet.

You might try patiently working through 1 or more of the 4 ways to reset InDesign as discussed in this compendium of troubleshooting. Lately, I have sometimes reset InDesign first with method 1; then with method 3; then with method 1 again. Believe it or not, that has gotten InDesign to work ok for me just lately (but that detail is highly anecdotal to my Windows 11 machine; not my macbook pro machine).

For what it is worth, from my shortcut-oriented perspective, I don't use the History panel in favor of Cmd/Ctrl+Z to Undo, and Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+Z to redo. I only mention that as a work-around, however you didn't say whether you are using the History panel or the keyboard shortcuts. Have you tested both?

[Cheesusmice]

I'm having the same issue and it does the same with CTRL Z, but you can open the history panel and see it reverting to just a few actions. 

I've reset everything and tried other versions, currently back to 20.5 which is also doing this.

[Rania Gk]

Thank you!
I'll use the History panel. I hope this to be a temporary, and not a permanent, solution.

I definetelly prefer the use of Ctrl+Z.

[Rania Gk]

Hi Mike!

Your answer it was definitely immediate and thank you so much for that!
I've never used History panel before. This is a solution for me but I'd prefer the use of Cmd/Ctrl+Z to Undo, and Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+Z to redo.
I hope the Adobe give a solution for this.

Thank you so much

[raghav_9927]

For me history pannel is also not working it is resetting after 3 undo

[sandrac57029201]

I used to have the option for multiple undos in InDesign but since updating to v21.0.2 last week, that function has seemingly disappaeread and I can now only go back one or two undos which is increasingly frustrating. Can anyone help please?

[Eugene Tyson]

Try resetting your preferences:

InDesign 19.3 and newer go to Preferences > General > and click on "Reset Preferences on Quit" and then quit and restart.

Or
Windows: Start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
macOS: While pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
A dialog will appear asking to delete the InDesign Preferences, select 'Yes' on this dialog.



More in-depth cleanse of preferences

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/indesign/kb/indesign-preferences-support-file-locations.html

Reinstalling rarely fixes everything - you can do a complete reinstall using the
Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

[kurir_2563]

I have exactly the same problem, and nothing helps: reset preferences, reinstal.

[Eugene Tyson]

None of that helps troubleshoot your problem

What's your os, system specs and version of indesign

Do you run a vpn  firewall or other 3rd party software etc

[leo.r]

Do you run a vpn  firewall or other 3rd party software etc

By @Eugene Tyson

I also wonder if all those who experience these issues are running the same piece of 3rd-party software. So far I didn't see any replies where someone would confirm that they tried the Safe Mode but the problem still persisted (unless I missed something). Especially since all reports are only coming from Windows users.

(This reminds me of a period where Mac users started reporting a slew of bizarre problems that eventually where tracked to a faulty update of a 3rd-party utility.)

[Outdesing]

What third-party software do you think this could be, for example?

[leo.r]

What third-party software do you think this could be, for example?

By @Outdesing

I personally have no idea as I'm on Mac. But it, potentially, can be anything (on either platform.) 

Like I already mentioned, have you tried the Safe Mode (which, as far as I understand, will boot your Windows machine without running any 3rd-party software)?

[Cécile32558879qh4k]

Pour mon cas, cela semble être Prolexis (correcteur d'orthographe)

[Outdesing]

Short addition:

I updated the GPU driver, but the problems persist.

Windows 11 (Version 25H2)

13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700 (2.10 GHz)

Free hard drive space: 276 GB

Installed RAM: 16 GB

Graphics cards 4 GB: AMD Radeon PRO W6400, Intel(R) UHD Graphics 770
Indesign Version 21.0.2 x64

[OsakaWebbie]

I, for one, am not running any special third party software that would have anything to do with the internals of InDesign. No VPN (although I don't know why that would matter, since it's installed software working with local files), no plugins, no premium security software (just a free anti-virus, but again, unrelated to local software), etc. Windows 11 Home 23H2, AMD Ryzen 7 5700U with Radeon Graphics (no separate GPU), 16GB RAM.

[leo.r]

I, for one, am not running any special third party software that would have anything to do with the internals of InDesign.

By @OsakaWebbie

There's no way to know what software might be messing with InDesign operations. Like I said, it can be anything.

Do you have the same issue when you're in Safe Mode?

[Outdesing]

So, I've now started the computer in safe mode. The problems persist... so third-party software doesn't seem to be the cause of the problems...

Is it just a coincidence that the InDesign errors occurred shortly after the Bridge update was installed? Many of us use Bridge alongside InDesign, right?

By the way: For an hour now, the fourth of seven computers in our department has been affected by the InDesign errors, without anyone knowing the cause...

[OsakaWebbie]

I don't use Bridge, so it's not exclusive to Bridge users. But it's possible that there was a single update that Adobe rolled out for Bridge and multiple major versions of InDesign at the same time (something that handles memory or cache, for example - I could imagine that being related to both the bugs reported here).

[Anubhav M]

Hello @OsakaWebbie,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. We are currently checking this with the product team. Could you also share the following information:

For macOS computers:
System Report

- You can generate it from the Apple icon > About This Mac > System Report > Save to the desktop.

For Windows computers:

System Report:

- Please press Windows Key + the letter "R" on your keyboard to bring up the Run command window

- Type "msinfo32" in the Open field and left-click OK

- While viewing the Microsoft System Information summary, go to File, then choose Save (Please do not use Export)

- Save your MSINFO32 report as "msinfo32.nfo" on your desktop to easily locate it after. It can take up to a minute to generate a report.

Kindly upload the files and a screen recording of your exact workflow leading up to the problem to Google Drive/Dropbox/etc, and share a public link here or via DM so that we can investigate this further.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav