My Indesign files have changed to Exec files and I can't open them

Thanks. This seems to show that the file has been replaced or damaged, not just renamed. Do you have a backup?

We can't say if they are useless if you don't answer the question, so please reply... you need to expand on what happened when you renamed the files to add .indd at the end. DO NOT DOUBLE CLICK THEM, open them using the File Menu using InDesign. What exact messages do you get?

I would be exceptionally concerned about the symptoms you are experiencing in terms of the file extension being changed to .exe from .indd and InDesign itself not being able to open the files directly. I suspect that the size and contents of those files may have changed as well and that what you may actually have is a malware attach that further mucks up your system and/or network if you double-click on these files.

To be very clear, no Adobe application ever changes file suffixes to .exe or any other executable file format.

          - Dov

Hi

If Stephen’s advice does not work, the run your Malware program. If you don’t have one, I think Malwarebytes comes with a free trial.

Malwarebytes Cybersecurity for Windows, Mac, Android & iOS | Malwarebytes

~ Jane

Is it only these 3 files?

All you should need to do is add a .indd filename extension back to the files.

EDIT: If many files had a missing extension and were “broken”, or you had many files and they were a mix of different file types and it would be too much work to manually figure out which were which, then I would use the following method to “magically” restore missing extensions:

Prepression: ExifTool - Automatically Adding Missing File Type Extensions