v16.2.1 - Share for Review repeatedly opens while editing a document

[Jadyndar]

I'm currently working on a long document with a lot of cross-references to other documents in the same book. Whenever I edit anything in this document, the Share for Review flyout (not the Review panel, the thing that appears when you click the Share icon next to the workspace menu) opens as an empty frame, and InDesign hangs for a few minutes. According to Task Manager, InDesign's disk use increases to around 10-12 MB/s during this time, but CPU and RAM usage remain the same. None of Adobe's background processes show any anomalous behavior while InDesign hangs. When disk use starts falling to zero, InDesign stops hanging, allowing me to close the Share for Review flyout and do anything else with the UI. However, this behavior returns if I make any further changes to the document.

I've tried turning off both live preflighting and auto-updating URL status, as well as restoring my preferences (as recommended in other posts dealing with this issue), but this issue has persisted nevertheless. It's made getting any work done on this document painfully slow. The same flyout also opens while editing other documents, but since those documents are shorter and contain far fewer cross-references, I haven't noticed a significant performance hit while editing them. I work alone and therefore have no use for the Share for Review feature, so I'd really rather just disable it altogether (if that were possible; perhaps such an option could be added in a future update?).

For reference, I'm running InDesign 16.2.1 on Windows 10 Pro (version 2004), and Creative Cloud is up to date.

[Eric Dumas]

CAn you try to turn off  your internet access to check if going online is at fault here.

There might be a checking process that is causing you to hang.

[Jadyndar]

I tried unplugging my PC's ethernet cable and doing some editing, but even with no Internet access, the Share for Review flyout still appears with each edit, and InDesign still hangs. However, I did notice that its disk use while hanging maxed out at around 0.7 MB/s (compared to roughly 12 MB/s with Internet access), although the background for that cell in Task Manager was more saturated than usual, which normally indicates a greater share of activity. As before, the increase in disk use was the only indication in Task Manager that InDesign was doing anything while it was hanging; its CPU and RAM use stayed the same.

[Jadyndar]

To follow up, I tried reinstalling InDesign (after uninstalling both it and CoreSync via CC Cleaner Tool) to see if that would solve the problem, but it didn't. I'm running out of ideas here...

[Jadyndar · Accepted solution]

After some trial and error, it appears that this behavior is due to my trying to edit the document in question without also having the documents it cross-references open. What seems to be happening is that InDesign is checking cross-references one by one, opening and closing the document they reference each time. In my case, this is hugely inefficient, since the vast majority of my cross-references point to locations in one of only two other documents. Couldn't InDesign simply open each cross-referenced document once, cache the locations of all hyperlink destinations therein, and refer to this cache when it needs to check whether a cross-reference needs to be updated?

This discovery led me to a workaround that completely avoids the troubling behavior that prompted me to start this thread: keep all cross-referenced documents open while editing the document containing the Xref sources. I wouldn't call this a solution per se, as it forces me to adjust my workflow, but it's at least more tolerable than the alternative, so I'd consider this issue solved. Nevertheless, I'd like to encourage the InDesign dev team to consider possible alternatives like the one I offered in the previous paragraph. In preparing to start this thread, I found that disabling live preflighting and automatic URL checking didn't prevent the problematic behavior, so those aren't viable solutions in the current version of InDesign. Something else is needed to prevent this cross-reference checking behavior from interfering with editing in the way I experienced, and it shouldn't involve forcing users to change their workflow.

[Laubender]

Hi Jadyndar,

I think we need a new campaign for the feature:

"Disable Live-Update of Cross References"

So up-vote at InDesign UserVoice Feature Requests:

disable "live-update" of cross-references
G.Dogg, February 12, 2018
https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/33296185-di...

Also read this article by Kelly Vaughn for a workaround :

Put Your Book Documents on a Time-Out for Bad Behavior
Kelly Vaughn, January 27, 2013

https://creativepro.com/put-your-book-documents-on-a-time-out-for-bad-behavior/

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )