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InDesign 2019 v14.01 spinning beachball every few seconds

Explorer ,
Jan 25, 2019 Jan 25, 2019

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When II open a file, if it's longer (say 60 pages) it spins every few seconds, hangs, and then comes back to life. Ad infinitum.

I am posting this new topic because everything I can find points to v14.00, not v14.01, and explains this exact issue. I've uninstalled all versions of InDesign, reinstalled, systematically removed other apps (Removed all Plugins, deactivated and uninstalled Extensis Suitcase Fusion, ESET Antivirus, Dattodrive sync, etc), deactivated fonts, cleansed all my links, and on and on. The only thing that seems to help is shortening the document, like whatever is taking place is looking at my whole document. Still beachballs but only for a second, and with a single page it doesn't interrupt but still doesn't feel fast.

I also ran Apples hardware test to make sure it wasn't just a broken GPU or something and everything came back positive.

To help get the obvious stuff out of the way:

1. Turned of Save Page Preview

2. Disabled all the fun font features (live preview, preview on hover, etc)

3. turned of page panel thumbnails

4. set view display to Typical and made sure those were at a normal level

System:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) 32GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB

External 30" Dell

Logitech Craft Keyboard and Mouse

Anyone have any ideas?

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Jan 26, 2019 Jan 26, 2019

When you uninstalled and reinstalled did you do it in the following manner?:

In the app section of your Creative Cloud desktop app click on the “V” next to the app’s (InDesign) name and choose the “Uninstall” option from the pull-down menu that appears. After you’ve run the uninstall then use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems . Then reinstall the program through the Desktop app. Before you reinstall, once again trash all preference

...

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Community Expert ,
Jun 12, 2019 Jun 12, 2019

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I'd suggest that you contact Customer Support and request an escalation so you have an engineer remotely observe your computer.

There are a host of reasons in a computer setup that can cause your problem. Your symptoms are particular to your set-up and that may be the only way it can be diagnosed.

I have a setup similar to yours with lots of fonts installed (no font management (including many Adobe Fonts which are synced) and experience no such symptoms.

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Contributor ,
Jun 12, 2019 Jun 12, 2019

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Meaning no offence, but if I did that I would expect hours of useless tests (as per KB articles) and moreover I believe the spinning ball is not really detectable via remote screen sharing... confusing even more... this is really too difficult to diagnose remotely.

I will leave it as a remote last chance.

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Contributor ,
Jun 12, 2019 Jun 12, 2019

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The beach ball in InDesign can have many causes - my approach should only show one way that you surely think last. If the problem is to be limited to fonts, then I would deactivate all the fonts and try to activate by gradually asking if it is really a corrupt font.

At any rate we have no problems with a beach ball in InDesign 14.0.2 (Fontmanager is here FontAgent).

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 23, 2019 Jul 23, 2019

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I've been having the same spinning beachball problem too. Productivity slows to a crawl with InDesign. Top of the line new Mac, the latest (CC 2019) InDesign as well as trying older versions. Many other people I know are having the same problem.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 23, 2019 Jul 23, 2019

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Have you gone through and tried the two pages of answers above?

There are many things that can cause the Spinning Beachball of Death and most of them have been discussed in this thread.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 23, 2019 Jul 23, 2019

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Yes. Have also been working with Extensis support, thinking it's a font-related issue. Nothing works.

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Contributor ,
Jul 24, 2019 Jul 24, 2019

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Yes Jeff, I did. This is a real bug, very serious, and it's not a newbie "reset your preferences" stuff.

This renders an InDesign workstation totally unusable on large works.

This needs more attention by Adobe support team.

I got a mail from a guy from the developer/support team exactly one year after my inquiry.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 24, 2019 Jul 24, 2019

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I feel your pain, because I've been there while working on a series of high-res billboards. The Spinning Beachball of Death comes on after a couple of minutes of working, then nothing. I would click on a menu and it would open for less than a second after two minutes of waiting, click again to reopen, more waiting. Dead in the water!

The only thing that worked for me was turning off my custom Preflight, which I suggested way back at the beginning of this thread. 

From the variety of answers above, I would say this is not one simple issue, but a bunch of possibilities all with the same result.

Please keep us posted on your interaction with Adobe.

Good luck!

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Explorer ,
Jul 24, 2019 Jul 24, 2019

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HI all, OP here. I was able to resolve my immediate issue.

While I will agree with the many experts on this forum that a myriad of setups could cause a beachball of death, I am confident there is a real bug with the way the latest InDesign handles fonts/refreshes/something resulting is a serious hangup.

On to my solution: Make a new user. I tested this theory when I moved to a new machine, but that was before 14.02 (14.01 had a similar bug that was squashed but still present for me). While moving everything to a new user can be painful (and sometimes require IT's help), I have had success on both 2013 Mac Pro and a 2017 iMac. Adobe has now removed the option to install older versions of InDesign (below v13.xx), but the other culprit could have been our need to have InDesign v9.3 (2014) installed as well.

I feel either the combination of having both versions of InDesign, or some corrupt cache that develops over time were possible sources for this issue.

I hope that helps someone!

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Contributor ,
Jul 29, 2019 Jul 29, 2019

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Hi,

confirm making a new user is solving - at least my version of - the spinning ball!

Now really need to deep dive and understand the real cause because it's really impossible to use ID in a new user environment.

L.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 25, 2019 Sep 25, 2019

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What I don't get is why Adobe is not fixing this issue pronto. It honestly can't be up to the users to jump through arduous hoops to make a tool we pay a lot of money for work. Honestly!!!

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Explorer ,
Mar 30, 2020 Mar 30, 2020

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Hey MossArtDept,

 

I read all your comments and it really is disappointing that they decided to call this "solved". It's not solved and it IS an Adobe issue. I've been having this issue for the last couple weeks now on certain files and I've experienced it in the past after updating my InDesign. Luckily, I have found a solution and YES it is a fonts issue.

If you've previously packaged your fonts, make sure you have the document closed and delete the fonts folder that was created when you packaged the file. You should be able to repackage your file from there and you won't have any more issues... until the next update. I hope this works for you and others out there!!!

TL;DR
Delete the fonts folder that's created when you packaged the project.

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Contributor ,
Jun 21, 2020 Jun 21, 2020

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Hi there, 

 

this is silly: issue is still there, untouched, even after InDesign 2020 15.1.1 installed!

 

Anyway, no, deleting the packaged fonts folder is not solving the problem.

Take a look at the video, maybe will be easier than reading...

 

Same, same, same, same behavior:

1) Spinning ball when focusing into a specific document (not all)

2) Spinning ball time proportional to doc lenght, layers and font numbers (from 2-3 sec to 40+ secs!)

3) Reducing document complexity proportionally reduces spinning ball time, but not eradicates it

4) Changing ALL fonts and styles into a single font seems to solve

5) Creating a new user on Mac and running from there opens complex document with NO spinning ball

6) Apparently not related to font managers

7) Definitely font related, a LOT of font folders (and settings folders) reading is detected by spoofing OS activity. 

 

... I'm now living with this problem since 5-6 years... even still there after 2 Mac hardware change and clean install.

 

 

Puzzled.

Will keep investigating.

 

 

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New Here ,
Feb 18, 2021 Feb 18, 2021

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Hi did you have any luck with this ? We are being crippled by this at our agency. Beachballs all the time. Slowing us to turtles pace. 

 

Ive tried everything. 

Delete Preferences

Delete Caches.

Remove App

Use Creative cloud Cleaner Tool.

Reinstall App.

Remove 3rd Party Plug ins

Turn off most of the Functions in Indesign.

Setting up a new user on the Mac

Working locally / or on File Server.

 

My guy tells me this is an issue with indesign trying to make some sort of call back to the adobe servers to check something and potentially how it handles fonts. If I disable the Internet network – turn off WIFI, Turn off Ethernet.  The problem goes away.

 

The Problem is specifically a Beachball for 5-20 seconds sporadically but very regularly when you do things such as. Change a font, Move a text box, Scale Type, Rotate or scale an image. You cant replicate it doing the same actions every time, but its generally when doing things like that. This happens on indesign files both Saved on our network drive, or locally on my Mac. This has been an ongoing issue since 2019 version  to varying degrees.

 

Ive got my IT team as well as Extensis looking into it.

I was disspointed adobe tried to shrug it off and say its an OS issue. 

 

If you have any further insights i'd love to hear it. 

 

Cheers...Just as puzzled as you in June 2020

 

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Contributor ,
Feb 20, 2021 Feb 20, 2021

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Hey there, short answer:nope! 

I do not think we are facing the same issue as mine is not connected to Wi-Fi but with focusing out and back the InDesign app. 
In my case a new user solves the trouble (but as soon as I reinstall some unknown config or file or app it comes back).

 

Since you're talking about Internet access I would test everything like dns, firewalls, anti malware, policies etc. and I also remind you that if you happened to install some "anti-Adobe" (don't say the name) stuff they might have blocked some server ip addresses using the "hosts" system file or similar.

 

Unfortunately Adobe support seems to get stuck in a loop in these situations as they try to "reproduce the bug on our system" of course it might be impossible to get the right combination of damages and that's blocking any further help...

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New Here ,
Mar 02, 2021 Mar 02, 2021

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LATEST

This is INSANE this bug has been messing my workflow for years. I went to even format my mac, and the issue persists. my thoughts is that is a combination between, and external monitor, gpu, or sending/receiving data form Adobe. ADOBLE PLEASE FIX THIS NOW SINCERELY A PAYING CUSTOMER.

Anyone from Adobe contact me at miguel.33@gmail.com

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