Some InDesign Files Slow Program to a Crawl; Corrupted? Fixable?

[paulb74970136]

I am revising a book manuscript that was originally produced on InDesign CS3 back in 2008. The book is split into four files and contains many color photos and some complex formatting. Some of these four files work beautifully in InDesign CC 18.2.1, but others are sluggish, with the final file being so bogged down and glitchy as to be essentially unworkable, with typing taking 10-15 seconds to appear and draging items being almost impossible. I am working on a PC with Windows 10, Intel Intel Core i7-7700, 32Gb RAM. When the file is glitching, Windows Task Manager: Processes shows that the CPU and memory usage is low (20% and 33% respectively) but there is "Very High" power usage while it is glitching. Note that the worst file is also the smallest and simplest of the four, and the largest (2x the smaller files) works seamlessly. I've tried clearing Object Level Display Settings, set the Display Performance to "Fast Display," purged preferences when opening InDesign, and all the other gimmicks suggested online, but none have worked. Needless to say, I'd love to still have my InDesign CS3, but Adobe killed it and now requires me to use the Creative Cloud, which would be fine IF IT WORKED. Any suggestions to help debug and fix this corrupt file would be greatly appreciated.

[Nancy OShea]

[Moderator moved from Using the Community forums to InDesign.]

I have old manuscripts in MS Word Doc & RTF files.  Some of those are sluggish now, too.  I think it says more about the age of the file & technology that was used to create it than it does about modern software.  They're too far apart.

You may not want to hear this and for that I'm sorry but  IMO it would be best to archive old files and create new ones with modern fonts & styles.

[paulb74970136]

Thanks, I do appreciate the reality check. Having gone through the five stages of grief, I now accept that I will have to reconstruct the file. I probably wasted more time trying to recover it than had I just remade it. So it goes...

[Bill Silbert]

One simple trick that is usually used to clear up minor corruption in a file is to export the file from InDesign 18.2.1 as an IDML (File>Export>InDesign Markup (IDML)). Then open the IDML file with 18.2.1 and see if it now runs better. If it does work then just save it as a new INDD file.

[paulb74970136]

Thanks for the suggestion, Bill. The resulting file seems a little more responsive, but still painfully slow. Still, any improvement is welcome.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Can you share it for examination? Of course on priv, pack it with password, upload somewhere and send me a link. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Beside already mentioned IDMLing - check if you have complicated XML structure or links to a network location that doesn't exist anymore.

[paulb74970136]

Hi Robert, no, this file has never been on a network. As for its XML structure, I'm not that advanced a user and wouldn't know how to determine that.

[rob day]

Hi @paulb74970136 , What are the file sizes of the InDesign documents? Are all of the images Linked and not Embedded?

[paulb74970136]

Hi Rob, the most troublesome file is 41MB; the smoothest is 100MB. Their structures are similar. The photos are all embedded. These were the final files I had used to generate the PDFs that were sent to the printer back in 2008.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

You should never embed photos 😞

[rob day]

The photos are all embedded.

You might try unembedding the links followed by a Save As to a new version. If the originals no longer exist you should get an option to save them to a folder:

[rob day]

Unembedding is scriptable, see this post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/downloads-save-all-unembed-images-from-link-pane...

[paulb74970136]

Thanks to all who wrote with suggestions. After hours of futile attempts at altering the file I have finally decided simply to reconstruct it onto a new template, and so far it is working quite well. Sometimes it's just best to scrape away the old and start over.

[Nancy OShea]

You made a wise decision.  🙂