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Prins Niklas
Prins Niklas
Participating Frequently
August 8, 2018
Answered

How to fix my slow InDesign?

  • August 8, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 2268 views

Hi, my InDesign acts very slow, it's InDesign CC 13.1.

I'm on a MacBook Pro Mid 2015, 16 Gb RAM, 2.8 Ghz, AMD Raedon R9, MacOs High Sierra 10.13.6.

When working in larger, more complex designs i.e. a 372 pages book with page spanning footnotes, if I try to insert a word it takes about 2 seconds before the first character gets visible, the "beach ball" appears, and if I try to delete a character the "bath ball" appears again. It's extremely frustrating!

I've tried to:

  • restarted my computer
  • saved a copy of the document
  • deleted an reinstalled InDesign (without installing the old prefs)
  • deleted the pref files
  • deleted the InDesign cash folder
  • exported the document to an imdl-file and reopened it
  • deactivate the page preview in the page panel
  • deactivated the two bottom checkboxes (in all 4 possible configurations) in the "advanced text"-meny under InDesign preferences (I'm on a Swedish version of the program so I don't know the correct english name for these boxes: "Sammanhangsberoende textkontroller" in Swedish, se pic below).

Any more suggestions anyone?

/Niklas

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Peter Kahrel

So what happens if you change column-spanning footnotes to non-spanning ones?

3 replies

Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
Peter KahrelCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 9, 2018

As Jointy suggested, do check what's up with p. 108. Then consider some things that InDesign doesn't like:

- Links to images on remote servers (this appears to happen especially on Windows). This (often) slows down opening a document so it's not relevant for you

- Lots of GREP styles

- Column-spanning paragraphs. Maybe your column-spanning footnotes are a problem, though I've not seen problems with that yet.

- Lots of cross-references, especially to other documents

Probably more, but these are the ones I regularly run into.

Peter

    Prins Niklas
    Prins NiklasAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    August 9, 2018

    Thanks for these thoughts to, but all documents is on my local disc, and no GREP-styles at all, no cross-references. The only thing out of the ordinary is column-spanning footnotes.

    Peter Kahrel
    Community Expert
    Peter KahrelCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    August 9, 2018

    So what happens if you change column-spanning footnotes to non-spanning ones?

      Prins Niklas
      Prins NiklasAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      August 8, 2018

      Bill, thanks for your answer!

      But as i wrote I've tried to export it as a IDML-file and reopened it – but that did not solve the issue.

      And unfortunately I do not have any earlier version of the document – and I could not have used that anyway since this is a book that has been edited by the writers a few times – the writers didn't edit the InDesign-file, they made their corrections on a print witch I then have used to correct the InDesign-file – so that's not a possible solution. Tomorrow I will try to split the document in smaller parts and link them together in a InDesign Book-file, I hope that do the trick!

      Prins Niklas
      Prins NiklasAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      August 8, 2018

      Now it got stranger! The problem appears on page 108 and goes onward all the way to the end, but before page 108 there's no problem!

      Bill Silbert
      Community Expert
      Bill SilbertCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 8, 2018

      Has the problem appeared on any other document or just this one? Do you have an earlier version of the file that can be worked on? If it is only happening with this file try exporting the file as an IDML and then reopening it in your current version of InDesign. This can sometimes remove corruption that may have occurred in a file.

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