Ohmnath,
Thank you for your follow-up! Unfortunately, we are on a Windows network here. Windows workstations/Windows server.
We've only experienced this I'd say in the last two years. I can add that there have been various causes each time I've tried to troubleshoot the matter.
- Server hard drive space. We actually capped that one day! Packaging a book for publication did not copy all of the associated linked graphics. Once we discovered our error, we were able to correctly package.
- Odd characters within the linked file name. This has been a rare issue, but an issue nonetheless.
- Finally, as was the case for me yesterday that prompted my reply to this thread, it appears as though one file name was too long to copy.
My frustration comes in two parts.
- Even after troubleshooting and tracing this back to one file, I still cannot say if it was the one file that simply created some programmatic bottleneck that then stopped all following linked files from copying over, or if there are additional, underlying issues that prevented a proper copy of the remaining linked files.
- There is simply no error message to let the user know that something is amiss! Generally, it has become standard process now that upon a book/document package, we must manually rename the primary working files "artwork" folder, thus breaking the path links that the packaged document may have inherited (instead of copying and updating). In the case of yesterday's breakdown, 93 links successfully copied upon package. Some 200+ did not; however, in that there is no programmatic trigger to tell InDesign that there is a hiccup during packaging linked files, the document acts as if nothing is wrong.
In other words, the packaged document correctly links to the successfully copied 93 files within the newly created Links folder. That same document is also still linking to the ORIGINAL WORKING FILES ARTWORK FOLDER as if nothing went wrong. We open the packaged InDesign book, receive no errors, and assume all is good. Burn to disc or transfer files to client!
to avoid this embarrassment with our clients, we now have to manually change our file path name to force a break in any links that did not correctly update. Then when we open the packaged IND document we do see errors. Again, InDesign is not providing this notification. We are going out of the way to force-break content just to learn if everything has worked as we assume it should. Once we see the errors, we then troubleshoot to determine if the underlying cause is one of the three previously listed. Honestly though, there have been several package builds where I can find no logical cause for not packaging links. In those cases, I am left to manually select all files that show as broken links from the original workings files to then copy to the packaged, but incomplete, Links folder.
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With all that said (typed!), I am grateful for your reply. I hope that these details help. Ideally, I would truly love some notification that these files have not successfully packaged. Even more, I would hope to see some dialogue panel with a brief text field highlighting the file name/location that has tripped the failure. Perhaps it is as simple as one file, in a list of cued transfers, has an odd character. Perhaps that one error stops all remaining transfers. Pointing to that list item would truly help users pinpoint at least which file created the break. In our case, we usually have to comb through a few hundred filenames one way or another to discover this. Even then, sometimes it was not a file name issue. Those instances have been filed away to our X-Files directory, where we pretend they do not exist and pray clients never wish to revisit those publications.
😜
Thanks again, btw.
❤️
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