Indesign 16 is extremely slow when generating 3 level Index, Why?

[GadgetAngel]

I have a 1300 page book.

The book consists of 60 documents. I am running Indesign 16.0 and got the update via Creative Cloud App.

I want to generate an Index for my 1300 page book. So I use the Index panel with topics and manually created the Index markers via the Index panel. 

After I finished selecting the topics to Index, I press the "Generate Index" in the Index Panel.... It took over 2 hours to create the Index.  After Indesign created the Index, Indesign v16 freezes.  I can not save the Index file or the book. All I see is the spinning circle. 

I waited 3 more hours before I finally had to "End task" to exit Indesign App. 

Once I ended the Indesign Task, I could reopen the book and see the generated Index. Indesign does a document recovery. 

I have tried reinstalling Creative Cloud APP,  and I have tried reinstalling Indesign 16.0. I have made sure my Windows 10 machine OS is up to date. But no matter what I try to do, I can not get Indesign "generate Index" to work properly with out haveing to use "End Task". 

Anyone have any idea why this is happening?

[Eugene Tyson]

You might need to do a clean install - https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

Are you working from a server or working locally from your own hard drive?

But before you do that - let's try something else.

Try creating a new Book file and add your documents - and see if it persists. 

If it is persisting. What we can do is try an divide and conquer approach, and start adding half your documents to new book files to track down any rogue file(s).

Try adding just say 30 documents to another new book - and see if the problem persists.

Then try another new book with the other 30 documents.

If it works ok in one set of files, and not the other, you know the problem is in the other set of files.

So you can then start tracking down the problem document(s).

One you've narrowed down the problem it is easier to fix up.

[Eugene Tyson]

Oh - and did you open all your new files in the book file?

If not, then the problem might be that the Book file is opening and converting your old files (indesign 15) to the new version and that might be slowing things down.

Open all your files in InDesign 16 and save them - and redo the book. It might help.

[GadgetAngel · Accepted solution]

Yes, I saved the 60 document files in the Indesign 2021 format.

If I do things as you suggest I would have to relink all link document.  This book contains over 5000 linked docuements.  All the screen shots are not embedded in the book.

On top of that I would have to relink all PAGE hyperlinks. 

I decided to reset all Index Markers to NULL and redo the Index Markers.  I also created a NEW Index document to place the new generated Index.  I took me all day to redo the Index Markers but when I generated the Index it only took 1/2 hour to generate the Index.