Inspiring

Answered

Re: InDesign running slow. Spinning ball constantly appearing.

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
December 2, 2018
5 replies
2997 views

I have the 14.01 update, but I'm still having a major problem with slowness. After every click or character, I get the spinning ball for about 15 seconds plus however long it takes to accomplish a typical task.

I'm on a brand new iMac Pro with 64GB of RAM and tons of storage. I have the same problem on my Mac Book Pro.

I've tried downgrading to InDesign 2018, and there's no difference. I've also tried all the basic things in articles about increasing speed. With InDesign running, there's still 48GB of RAM free. Processors don't get over 8% utilization when the ball is spinning.

I've been working on this book now for a few weeks, and I suddenly started having the problem. Needless to say at 15 seconds per click or character, I can't get anything done. It takes over a full minute to type the word HELP.

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Correct answer Wodan

Try cleaning the font caches... it seemed to have solve my problems.

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DanaIngham

Participant

Spinning Beach Ball has been driving me nuts the past few days.

Tried other suggestions in thread -- didn't work.
Tried quitting Google Drive -- InDesign problem disappeared.
Restarted Google Drive -- problem came back.
Quit Google Drive again -- problem went away, again.
Finished my work, restarted Google Drive, work synced just fine.
Problem with InDesign only, no other Adobe apps. Syncing issue?

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

The fact that it's happening on 2 different computers shows it's document based.

As a matter of trial and error, can you divide the document into 2, and see if it's still happening. If it is only happening on 1 of the halves, keeping halving that document by splitting it in 2, until you narrow the page/pages.

It sounds tedious, but it really is super quick.

I wrote an FAQ for files crashing on output - but a lot of it could help you track down the problem areas.

File Crashing on Output - printing/PDF/other

Another thing you could try is unloading all your fonts and loading only the fonts required for the document.

And another thing you could try is changing the font the a different font - on a duplicate of your file (keep the original).

You can change the fonts throughout by using the Type>Find Font and then you can map fonts to different fonts. If you're using styles, make sure you tick the Update Paragraph Style (or something similar).

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aafisherAuthor

Inspiring

I collected the entire book for output, then I opened the new files. Things actually sped-up considerably. It's still not as fast as it should be, but I can actually work now. The delay has decreased to 1-3 seconds per character.

Thanks, Eugene. I'll give your file crashing guide a look through.

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aafisherAuthor

Inspiring

Maybe I spoke too soon. One of the sections of the book was working much faster, but another is just as slow.

I tried saving to an IDML file, then converting back to InDesign 2019. Editing that file is just as slow as it was before the conversion.

Since clearing the font caches, it seems to be faster, but it's still taking 5 seconds for each key press to register, even if it's not bumping anything on the page up or down. Something is still wrong.

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

If it's every file - then there's something else at play.

Fonts may be something do with it.

Have you got a lot of fonts loaded, are you using a font manager?

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aafisherAuthor

Inspiring

I have lots of fonts loaded, but I'm using the latest version of Font Agent Pro.

In the past, I've laid-out larger books with more images, and there's never been this type of problem. Font Agent Pro was used during the layout of those publications, too.

I've also opened the INDB files with my Mac Book Pro, and it has the same problem.

I should add that this is the first time I'm using inline graphics.

WodanCorrect answer

Participant

Try cleaning the font caches... it seemed to have solve my problems.

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aafisherAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you Wodan. That has been the most effective solution yet.

Just to explain how to clear the font caches for others that might experience this problem:

For macOS Mojave:

quit all open applications.
launch Terminal
type: sudo atsutil databases -remove

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Have you tried exporting your file to IDML - open that file in Indesign and resave it.

Do you still have this issue?

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aafisherAuthor

Inspiring

Good idea. I haven't tried that.

I decided to break it apart into sections, then piece them back together into a book. It took me a couple of hours, and now the style sheets don't always work right (they seem to print fine, but depending on the chapter, they don't always show up correctly across the sections. Things have sped up a lot. Now when I print, I have blank pages between the sections, which I was trying to avoid.

In any case, it's definitely faster than it was before. One pet peeve is when the beachball is spinning, but there's little or no disk activity, and the processors aren't nearly taxed. Why have tons of fast processors when they don't seem to matter?