TOC Generation or Update Crashes InDesign

[Pariah Burke]

macOS 15.2, InDesign 20.0.1

When I generate or update a TOC there is a roughly 7 in 10 chance InDesign 2025 will crash. This happens with multiple documents and has been happening consistently with every document since the release of 20.0 in October.

• I initially thought it was because I was using ID '25 on macOS Ventura, but it's still happening with existing and new documents since updating my Mac to Sequoia.
• Additionally, the same files moved to other computers (Windows 10, for example) also crash there when generating, updating TOCs.
• Happens whether the documents in question are standalone or booked, with or without other TOCs in same document, with and without other documents opened.
• No problems with ID '22, '23, or '24 on the same computer, with the same content in new documents or with the pre-existing documents that had pre-25 file versions.

I had hoped that all those literally more than 100 automatic bug reports would have had Adobe fix the problem or reach out to me for info, but no. My own troubleshooting hasn't turned up the culprit, so I'm asking the community for help.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I don't think there's any question that ID 2025 has some serious bugs, even if they seem confined to some subset of the user base — mostly Mac, but not entirely; mostly newer OS versions there. The solution seems to be roll back to 2024 until further notice.

I'm in the group (Win11) that hasn't experienced any faults, but it's been a light production schedule for a few months and I haven't done any particularly large or complex files for a bit. I may simply be dodging bullets.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Pariah Burke

Have you tried IDMLing your INDD files? 

[Pariah Burke]

I did, yes. I also tried using '24's conversion back to '24-version INDD (which never finished).

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Are you doing anything complex or unusual in your TOCs — such as GREP styles, or do the target items use cross refs or variables? Or does this happen on plain-vanilla text-to-text TOC creation?

[Pariah Burke]

Are you doing anything complex or unusual in your TOCs — such as GREP styles, or do the target items use cross refs or variables? Or does this happen on plain-vanilla text-to-text TOC creation?

It happens with vanilla text-to-text TOC creation.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Pariah Burke

Can you share your file? Can be on priv if you prefer - please click my nickname.

[Pariah Burke]

Submitted a bug to Adobe here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/49283441-toc-generation...

[Pariah Burke]

It literally took me a (work) week to generate the table of contents for InDesign Masterclass: Type & Tables (and actually delayed the publication of that book) because InDesign crashed every single time, hour after hour, of trying to generate  the TOC for the INDB book of 12 INDDs. If I hadn't needed to teach MathML in the book, I wouldn't have used InDesign 2025 at all, and would have reverted to '24.

For InDesign Masterclass: Text Techniques I lost almost a week with the same crashing. In the end, I built the table of contents by hand, line by line, hyperlink by hyperlink, instead of using InDesign's built-in TOC feature.

[Eugene Tyson]

Have you tried creating a new Book file and reloading each document. 

I think I had something similar a long time ago and if I remember correctly my procedure was 

1. Export each file to IDML 

2. Open each file in the version of InDesign used for the book file

3. Save each as a new file name 

4. create a new book file

5. Load each document into the new book file

From what I remember the culprit was that the Book file was, say for example, created in InDesign 2024 but I was using InDesign 2025. 

I have seen strange crashes when all the parts of all the files involved are not natively for that version of InDesign.

Especially if the Book file itself was an older/newer version of InDesign to begin with and not the same version as the InDesign files themselves. 

---------------

As a last resort if it's still not working

You could try start a new document with same margins and page sizes etc. 

Then move your pages to the new document from the old document.

Then try the TOC generation again. 

You could try maybe the TOC document, and maybe 2 or 3 chapters to see if it improves. 

All loaded into a new Book File.

Hope that helps

[Pariah Burke]

Thanks, Eugene.

Alas, I tried all those, too, without success.

[Eugene Tyson]

Highly strange that it's not working. 

Any third party plugins? 

For example if you start your computer in Safe Mode and only open InDesign does it behave normally? 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/advanced-troubleshooting-for-launch-issues/td-p/...

[christinah55744972]

Thank You for existing,

I Thought that it was another error due to the fact that I often need to work through VPN, but not even sitting within the firewalls with a powerful connection to the servers help.

This is the first entry I found about the book-format and trying to use/generate/upated and/or re-generate a TOC-file for the hole book. (Burke: You have described the exact same issue as I have!)

I've just completed re-doing all files and the book using the indd to idml back to indd formats (thats a nice trick BTW).

Now I'm sure that all files are in the same version of InDesign. I also remade the content file from scratch and was crossing my fingers hoping for a good result. 

But NO, it crashed anyways. (Tyson: I'm glad for your pedagogic descrition, I was about to try the idml-trick on only one suspicios file, so it was very helpful to read what to expect).

BTW: Even when the TOC has been functioning it takes a silly amount of time to generate them for a book-file. However making them within a indd-file just covering the titles in the file goes superfast. And this works fine even in this version, so my work-around has been to make a TOC on the last page in each document, with a separate template so it sticks out. After that I copy the regenerated TOC for the chapter that is modified and paste it into the "old separate TOC-file" and exports everything to pdf. And while compiling pdf-files I throw away the TOC-pages. This is a irritating moment but it has helped since I'm revising technical instructions where many of the chapters stay the same for different products. But it will not do for the future work.

Other errors ocurred whith a previous upgrade so I suppose that I will have to tell my colleuges to go back in time and turn off the auto-upgrade, AGAIN!

Using InDesign proves to be a challenge and it feels like I have to reinvent my status as "queen of work-arounds" every other month. Guess if I'm looking forward to installing a CCMS!!!!

Now at least I know that I'm not crazy or having computer-issues. I will probably go back to the previous version of InDesign.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@christinah55744972

Generating anything within a Book goes much faster - if you open all iINDD files. 

Otherwise, InDesign is opening them in the background, but probably isn't doing it efficiently. 

[christinah55744972]

Ok, thanks! I'll see if it's possible. I used to have most of the files open while doing this, since I had to show and hide the different layers of language between pdf-exports. But during the start of the epidemic the VPN-solution and overall digital communication channels were quite unstable. So closing down all singlelanguage-files became closing all files as a hale-Mary-solution. Working within a company where the computer/IT-support don't have a clue of workig with lay-out, writing and publishing proved to be even more challenging during those years.

I'll go back to the "old ways" and see how it will behave! Have You seen any time-performing issues that has been better or worse during the latest releases?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@christinah55744972

Sorry, no idea about timings. 

[christinah55744972]

Tried to make a new ToC-version with all opened. At least the program crashed faster this way. Maybe it will be the time-solution, as soon as the bug is fixed (or rather when I've got older version re-installed).

[Mike Witherell]

I'm just throwing out a long shot here, but I recently went through deleting and decommissioning loads and loads of fonts. This put me in the position of having to re-install fonts on an as-needed basis. I made sure to hunt down old fonts, sometimes old TrueType fonts (my PS fonts have been long gone already). I got better overall performance after that. 

This is a chicken-soup it-couldn't-hurt idea, of course. And I should add that it improved my slow-down issue. I was not having a ToC issue. But since you are exploring a crash related to assembling a string of text, I thought I would mention it. 

That brings up another wish of mine: if we can all have a variety of try-this's and try-that's and tell them to each other, why can't a lot of this troubleshooting be put into a software app that can do things like analyze fonts, export to IDML and back, and other things like that? Why does so much troubleshooting have to be approached manually?

BTW, Pariah Burke, I always enjoy all your InDesign stuff you publish!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

[...] That brings up another wish of mine: if we can all have a variety of try-this's and try-that's and tell them to each other, why can't a lot of this troubleshooting be put into a software app that can do things like analyze fonts, export to IDML and back, and other things like that? Why does so much troubleshooting have to be approached manually? [...] 

By @Mike Witherell

All that can be easily done with my ID-Tasker tool. Including restarting InDesign between the steps. 

[christinah55744972]

I'll try any "chicken-soup" at this point!

I do have some problems with fonts, but that is mainly commonly known versions of InDesign to Acrobat issues, that still needs work-arounds.

I think it could be a good idea to remove fonts, it shouldn't be a problem when dealing with our main languages.

Problem being that we also have files consisting of anywhere between 10, 16, 19 or 32 languages. Especially the asian languages font styles behave a bit odd when mounting blocks of text from text-files and excel.

Since the ToC-manager recognize all styles in all layers in all existing files in the book while making the different language ToCs is that also an issue that makes it behave poorly?

I don't make ToCs for all languages, only our main five. But some of the generic files contain up to 19, and therefor 19 x title styles to choose from.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@christinah55744972

When generating TOC - you can ignore hidden layers. 

Or you might switch to a 3rd party solution to generate custom TOCs. 

[christinah55744972]

Yes I have ignore hidden layers as a default.

But I suspect that InDesign are affected by the amount of different paragraph-formats/styles within some of the generic files (the 19-lang versions). Even if I only make 5 versions (our main lang) of "Content-formats". Even if it doesn't it is annoying to scroll through a list 80 paragraph-styles when I'm only using 2 x 5.

Below the drop-down-list under "Andra format" only shows 4 of the remaining 70+ existing entries in the list.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@christinah55744972

Looks like you really need a 3rd party / custom solution... 

If you are working on a PC - you could try my ID-Tasker tool - isn't free but I can give you access to the full version for free for some time. 

[christinah55744972]

Yes, we have been looking for a component content management system (CCMS), for quite some time, not just as a 3d party solution, but to completely replace InDesign. I've tried without success to use Acrobat to create a TOC.

It's very nice of You to offer the ID-Tasker tool. But I'm bound by the companys' restrictions. And the IT department have the only administration roles / rights. And Yes we work on PC:s. 

Could You send me some material/ https:-url, so can I pass it on to my boss and the IT-department.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@christinah55744972

More info sent on priv - there is an envelope symbol at the top of this page.

CCMS, DAM, font management, etc. isn't a problem for IDT.