"Cannot handle the request because a modal dialog or alert is active."

[dunelucy]

"Cannot handle the request because a modal dialog or alert is active." Can't open things, can't save things, can't use shortcuts, and it has gotten worse and worse to the point where now no tools or anything works. I am SO fed up with this issue. I have read the posts on here about it, but nothing has worked. I have thrown out and rebuilt my preferences over and over and over. Restarting does nothing. Is there ANY long-term fix for this issue? Adobe, are you doing anything to address this? This issue is killing my productivity and I am losing work. If there was an alternative, I would switch in a second.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Are you running any third party plugins or startup scripts? If so try disabling them. Startup scripts load from here:

⁨Applications⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe InDesign 202X⁩ ▸ ⁨Scripts⁩ ▸ ⁨startup scripts⁩

Or here:

Users⁩ ▸ username ▸ ⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Preferences⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe InDesign⁩ ▸ ⁨Version XX.0⁩ ▸ ⁨en_US⁩ ▸ ⁨Scripts⁩ ▸ ⁨Scripts Panel⁩

[dunelucy]

I looked and only found one — ForceDirectory.txt. I deleted it, force quit again, restarted again, and so far so good. Could it really have been this simple? Fingers crossed. Thank you!

[dunelucy]

Well, that didn't last too long. Shortcuts weren't working today so I restarted and now Indesign won't even open.

[Joel Cherney]

Another less likely possibility: I had this error, once, when I was running off of a laptop and was constantly switching between being on the road, and being at home with my external monitor. The JS alert window was hidden on the external monitor, when the external monitor wasn't plugged in. 

[dunelucy]

I do go back and forth with a laptop between work and home, external monitor at work, but not home. I have searched the external monitor but not found a window.

[Manan Joshi]

If it's InDesign 18.5 on a MAC then this could be a bug. What I found that whenever InDesign was launched with the computer offline then InDesign showed this error, everything in the menu were disabled. Close InDesign, connect to the internet and then launch InDesign and voila everything worked again. I tried numerous things but nothing worked and I had to revert back to 18.4.

-Manan

[rob day]

I have thrown out and rebuilt my preferences over and over and over.

Can you tell us how you are resetting your Preferences? Have you also tried deleting your Caches folder?