Persistent Error in Adobe InDesign: ‘There Was an Error Updating the Artifact

[Chris Tammar]

When I go to update a review link in InDesign, I keep getting this error message "there was an error updating the artifact". After that, the link does not work for most people. I am signed in to Adobe. Everything is up-to-date.... But this issue still persists. Can Adobe please fix this issue? It's emarassing when I go to send the review link to my leaders and they just get an error message when they try opening it.

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[NOcreationsBE]

@Abhishek Rao, usually once the error message appears, it keeps reappearing every time in the same document. Sometimes it's more random (then it does for a few times, then it doesn't) and (in my experience) when I save the file with a new name, it can disappear. But then, of course, the review link is also new and the comments are no longer linked, which is not a good workaround. I've been experiencing this for years now with different versions of InDesign, simple and complex files, with resolved, unresolved, mapped and/or unmapped comments, and so it's still totally unclear to me what it could be due to. The only thing I do know, is that  I have never seen the error message appear after uploading a brand new file (the first time you choose Share for review for a file). It only happens after updates.
I understand that this is therefore also difficult for you to reproduce. Possibly the problem is not even related to the file (content or comments) itself. Since many people have this problem, I think it would be more efficient to have many Adobe employees create different files themselves on different devices and share them online for review, so that you can see and test for yourselves on the spot when it occurs and when it does not. That would probably work better than constantly asking complaining users to share files (because you cannot reproduce the issue with these files) and screenshots (because they are always the same) and ask if they have the latest updates (because it's obvious that's not the problem there either).

[Leon1982-2]

Yes, we're all still getting these errors, we're just tired of reporting them. The links typically do work (not always) even when the error is present which took me a long time to figure out. If you do a lot of back and forth edits with clients on a particular document though, you will eventually have to create a new share since it will stop working. This sucks because it erases all of your history. 

[tom_cog]

Also, "It probably updated correctly even though it says it didn't" just doesn't cut it when you're sharing complicated documents for review and final approval.

[NOcreationsBE]

@tom_cog, I completely understand! You can't check 100+ updates in large or complicated documents when you are working with deadlines. The only thing I can tell you, is that I never noticed any changes not updating, even after getting the error. You just have to refresh the page or come back a little later (and refresh the page). It is not a guarantee, but maybe a minor assurance if you have no choice but to work this way and no time to check all upates online.

• I would love to hear from others if they ever experienced that a change in the document was not visible after updating the online version, getting the error message and refreshing the page.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for sharing the details. I've escalated this to the product team, and they are currently investigating the issue. I'll keep you posted and share an update as soon as I hear back.

Thanks for your patience. 

Abhishek