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

[minebea_MichaelR]

Hi @Abhishek Rao ,

thanks a lot for caring about this issue!
🙏

Obviously this is a major issue for many users. In our company, it is heavily impacting work with Indesign. We are working with it every day.

Could you give kind advice on what to do as a work-around? 

Can you please give information if any of the following work-arounds is promising:

1.  ? Possible Workaround (A)? -> Uninstall v 21.1 without keeping presets and install again? (Note: uninstall/reinstall with keeping presets did not work with me nor with some other people I read here in this thread)
2. ? Possible Workaround (B)? -> Uninstall v21.1 and reinstall older version (e.g. v20.x), keeping presets.
3. ? Possible Workaround (C)? -> Uninstall v21.1 without keeping presets and reinstall older version (e.g. v20.x).

If number 2 or 3 is possible, please also name the specific version of Indesign it should work with.

Looking very much forward to reading from you soon, thanks a lot.
Michael

[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).