when I use "span footnote across columns" the file became very slow

Unfortunately, I have no solution for your problem – but reading your question solved my problem, on which I had almost given up. Deactivating "Span footnotes across columns" (which I don't need in my document) made typing in InDesign quick and smooth for me again. On top, it resolved another issue with disappearing text in text boxes. I couldn't be more happy right now and hope that you'll finally find a solution to make "span footnotes" work.

Well, hope springs eternal. I just upgraded to InDesign CS 2018, in the hope that this problem had been fixed. The bad news is, nope, it hasn't been fixed, just as slow as before. The good news is that I now get entertained by a little spinning blue circle while waiting for InDesign. Thanks, Adobe!

I'm having the same problem. In any multiple-page document, when I have span footnotes turned on, the program slows to a crawl on any editing change - except on the last page, where the speed is normal. Turning off span footnotes resolves the problem, but I really need to span footnotes in these documents.

It is so slow that when I need to edit text, I type the text into a text editor and paste that into InDesign - otherwise, InDesign pauses for several seconds before displaying each character.

I do not have Align to Baseline Grid turned on. These are not long documents (2-10 pages), and they are mostly straight text, with very few graphics and a single text thread. The documents are in a Book, but the problem persists whether I edit them from within the Book or before I place them into the Book.

FWIW, the documents were created by opening an InDesign template and placing a Word file, including footnotes, into the document. The speed is normal until I span footnotes. I've tried both the document-level span footnotes (through the Type menu) and frame-level span footnotes (through Text Frame options) - same result. I have tried all the "tips for speeding up InDesign," none have helped.

I'm running Windows 10 on a computer with 12GB RAM, an Intel Core i7-6500U Processor, InDesign 2017.0 release, 12.0.0.81 x64 build, The problem has persisted through several InDesign upgrades. I had the same problem on, an older machine with 16GB RAM and Windows 7.

Dear All,

I think I found the cause of the problem, which is to make the text "align to baseline grad". When I omitted this option and select "Do not align to baseline grad", the program returned almost to normal, but it is still slow but better than before.

I hope someone else will find a solution to this problem.

Dear All,

Thank you very much for responding to my issue

Below is the link to download the file, note that I have done more than one file and the same problem exists ..

Greetings

https://we.tl/rPj8563RaC

hbmcfhsh31443093  wrote I am using Indesign CC 2017: when I use "span footnote across columns" the file became very slow when I make any editing. Can anybody help me?

InDesign becomes very slow when using any of the "spanning" features, not just footnote spanning. It's been that way since the span features were introduced.

Suggestions:

1. Don't use "balance columns" until you absolutely have to.

2. Divide a very long story into separate shorter stories (i.e., don't have a single story for an entire 100+ page book; instead, divide the book into chapters, one story per chapter [but avoid using InDesign's "book feature" unless you really have to).

3. Consider not using the "span footnotes" feature until you really have to. That is, do as much designing and typesetting as you can without spanning footnotes, and only as a last stage switch on that feature and make the necessary adjustments.

Meanwhile, Adobe may want to consider some serious optimization of these features.

(And if your only symptom is InDesign slowdown when using "span footnotes," I wouldn't bother trashing your prefs, as it's unlikely to make any difference.)

Ariel

In agreement, as Aman suggested, replacing Preferences can sometimes help -- and definitely upgrade to the newest version of InDesign if you've not already done that.

Another thing that could slow InDesign is if you have lots of images that have been copied or embedded into the document rather than linked. Check your Links panel to see if that is the case. If an image is embedded it will have a little badge as shown in the screen capture.

Hi,

There is no specific reason why spanning footnotes should cause the problem.

In addition to what Barbara said, you can start with cleaning your cache and preferences Troubleshooting 101: Replace, or "trash" your InDesign preferences

Another important step you can try is to upgrade your InDesign from CC 2017.0 to the latest which is CC 2017.1 It includes fixes related to bugs that can cause InDesign to be slow.

If still your problem persists and if its fine, you can mail me your document at amaarora@adobe.com so that I too can look into the issue and suggest a possible workaround, if one exists.

-Aman

amaarora@adobe.com

InDesign is just slow when spanning footnotes, and at other times as well. Here are some general things you can try in order to speed up InDesign:

• Preferences > Display Performance. Set the Default View to Typical.
• Click the down arrow next to the preflight button and turn off preflight while working on the document. Preflight can significantly slow InDesign. Be sure to turn it back on again before finishing up your document to make sure there are no preflight errors.

• Preferences > Interface. Turn off Live Screen Drawing.
• In the Hyperlinks panel, turn off 'Auto Update URL Status'
• If you have lots of page, in the Pages panel menu, select Panel Options and deselect the Show Thumbnails.