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Removing bad index cross-references

New Here ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

I have a long document with a detailed index. There are several cross-references that show up as blank in the compiled index. If I try to link to a valid cross-references nothing happens - the cross-referenced topic remains blank.  Whenever I try to delete a bad cross-reference entry in the index list, InDesign crashes to the desktop (Mac OS).  I now get a corrupted file warning when I re-launch after a crash. 

 

I'm pulling my hair out. Is there any way to remove these without causing an app crash or am I resigned to having to delete each bad entry in the compiled index?

 

Thanks in advance for any help. 

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Adobe Employee ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

Hello @lance_7340,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Could you share more details, like the version of the OS/Illustrator installed, if this happens with this specific file, and a small screen recording of your exact workflow, so I can better assist you?

Also, please submit the crash report using your Adobe email address and share it here for quick tracking. The steps are shared here: (https://adobe.ly/47am8RJ).

 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

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New Here ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

Thanks, I am ready to do that. The page you sent is for crash reports for Illustrator and the one for InDesign doesn't have an email to send the crash logs to. Is there a separate email for InDesign reports?

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New Here ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

Also the zipped file is over 350 MB so I am unable to send as an email attachment. If there is an alternate way to send please let me know.

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Adobe Employee ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

Hello @lance_7340,

I'm sorry about the confusion. Kindly try the steps outlined here (https://adobe.ly/4ovKsDH) and let us know if they help. Also, kindly submit the crash report by following these steps (https://adobe.ly/4m90uBD).

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

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Community Expert ,
Aug 12, 2025 Aug 12, 2025

Hi @Anubhav M . This is a serious and continuing problem. There have been many reports in this forum, UserVoice, and non-Adobe forums. Maybe you could nudge someone to do something about it. The index feature has been neglected after it was introduced many years ago. Adobe should at least fix this crashing bug.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

This problem was reported in the past in this forum, but I can't find it now and I can't remember if there was a solution.

 

Anyway, further to what was outlined in the links that Anubhav gave, you can try exporting the document to IDML, then open the IDML again in InDesign (which will take a while with long documents). IDML-roundtripping often fixes problems. And if you use ID 2024, make sure you update it to the latest version.

 

As for posting big files, you can use Dropbox or file-transfer services such as WeTransfer.

I'd be interested to see your document.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

A web search ("InDesign index crash") shows many reports of InDesign crashes when editing index entries, going back to CS3. No clear solutions were suggested in the few posts I checked, but it may be worth your while to checks those posts.

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New Here ,
Aug 11, 2025 Aug 11, 2025

Thanks Peter, yes I also recall finding some similar posts when this first started happening a few months back but don't think I ever saw any sort of resolution. It is 100 percent repeatable with multiple entries, at least in this document. I have been submitting automatic crash reports regularly. 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 12, 2025 Aug 12, 2025

@lance_7340 -- You could try to fix it in the IDML file. Not just a simple roundtrip, but a fix. It's more straightforward than it looks.

 

1. Export the document to IDML.

2. An IDML file is in fact a ZIP file. Unpack the file. If necessary change the IDML file type to ZIP. You'll see six folders and two files:

 

PeterKahrel_2-1754994272231.png

 

3. Open designmap.xml and look for the <Index> section. The section looks as follows (this sample document contains just two topics, Azerty and Qwerty; Azerty has a cross-reference to Qwerty):

<Index Self="uff">
  <Topic Self="uffTopicnAzerty" SortOrder="" Name="Azerty">
    <CrossReference Self="u11d" ReferencedTopic="uffTopicnQwerty" CrossReferenceType="See" CustomTypeString="" />
  </Topic>
  <Topic Self="uffTopicnQwerty" SortOrder="" Name="Qwerty" />
</Index>

 

PeterKahrel_3-1754994533060.png

Now, I don't know what that section in your file looks like but you should be able to identify the topics with missing cross-references.  How you proceed now depends on how many cross-references there are and how many of them are faulty. If there are only a handful of ill-formed items, delete them and redo them in InDesign. If that turns out not to work, delete all the lines that start with <CrossReference .

 

4. When you're done, save designmap.xml and zip up the files in the folder. Change the ZIP file type to IMDL and open the IDML file in InDesign. Check the state of the Index panel.

 

Hope this helps. I can't reproduce the problem so I've no idea whether the above works. As I mentioned earlier, if you can post your file somewhere (or the exported IDML, which will be much smaller than the 340 Mb file) I'll happily take a look.

 

 

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New Here ,
Aug 12, 2025 Aug 12, 2025

Thanks much Peter. I tried this but unfortunately I get a crash to desktop as soon as I try to save the IMDL file with nothing actually saving. Tried it with two different iterations of the file (both with bad cross-references) and it failed the same way both times. 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 12, 2025 Aug 12, 2025
LATEST

Ugh. Ugly.

 

Yet another thing you could try, though I don't know if it's at all feasible with your big document. Page references live in the text, they're markers in stories. Cross-references aren't, they are part of the document but are not in the text. So what you can do is copy all the text into a new document. That works only if you don't have too many floats (independent text frames with secondary text and tables, and image frames).

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