Corrupt Table of Contents Fix

[#1]

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but I thought I'd post it anyway to help others avoid frustration.

I've been working in an ID document created in v13.1 for the last few months. It's a simple 32-page product catalog. For the first draft, made several months ago, in v13.0, I produced a TOC from the page headers. The "create TOC" worked perfectly, using my character/paragraph styles as desired.

After the latest client revisions this week, more information was added (copy, pics, vector art). When I went to update the TOC, InDesign crashed. It crashed even when I tried to delete the text box containing the TOC. Performing any TOC function caused the program to instantly crash.

I tried resetting the program prefs, but it didn't help.

What did repair my corrupt file was this:

The first approach to debugging an InDesign file that crashes is to save it (export, in versions earlier than CS6) as an IDML. Opening the IDML in InDesign will create a new INDD based on the saved XML information.

This has another benefit: InDesign files grow the more you edit them. Internally, an INDD is a database, and it doesn't shrink as much as it grows while you are working on it. The INDD > IDML > new INDD cleans out all the cruft.

This info is from this web site.

[#2]

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but I thought I'd post it anyway to help others avoid frustration.

I've been working in an ID document created in v13.1 for the last few months. It's a simple 32-page product catalog. For the first draft, made several months ago, in v13.0, I produced a TOC from the page headers. The "create TOC" worked perfectly, using my character/paragraph styles as desired.

After the latest client revisions this week, more information was added (copy, pics, vector art). When I went to update the TOC, InDesign crashed. It crashed even when I tried to delete the text box containing the TOC. Performing any TOC function caused the program to instantly crash.

I tried resetting the program prefs, but it didn't help.

What did repair my corrupt file was this:

The first approach to debugging an InDesign file that crashes is to save it (export, in versions earlier than CS6) as an IDML. Opening the IDML in InDesign will create a new INDD based on the saved XML information.

This has another benefit: InDesign files grow the more you edit them. Internally, an INDD is a database, and it doesn't shrink as much as it grows while you are working on it. The INDD > IDML > new INDD cleans out all the cruft.

This info is from this web site.

[#3]

You could try uninstall/reinstall with the Adobe CC Cleaner tool. Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems

[#4]

I was having the same issue with a TOC with[ i.e. updating the TOC and/or attempting to delete the textbox was causing immediate crash ] but INDD>IDML>INDD sequence fixed it completely.  I'm on V15.0.1.  Thanks for the help! 

[#5]

The INDD>IDML>INDD solution just fixed this exact issue for me too, on version 16.0.1 (updating my InDesign version, however, did not).