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H
Håvard Graudo
Inspiring
January 31, 2020
Answered

InDesign 2020 v15.01 makes corrupt documents (linked to Alternate Layout?)

  • January 31, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 1953 views

InDesign 2020 (v15.01) has a serious issue with making corrupt files. This is now rampant across several users and has become a nightmare.

 

What happens is:

At some point InDesign will give spinning beachball of death when opening the file, so it is not accessible anymore, or it might let you see the file for a minute or two before becoming unresponsive. Symptoms might also start with crashing on copy/paste, and then boom, corrupt document on open again. The document will then be totally inaccessable from InDesign 2020.

 

If I then use InDesign v2019 on a corrupt document to "Convert" it, it will usually be able to open in, sort of. It will however delete most of the paragraph styles and assign "Standard" to all text. So the document is a royal mess.

 

These are document templates we have been using for years. They have been used intensively with InDesign 2019 without problems. Version 2020 introduced the problem. We skipped version 15.0, waited until 15.01, so they have not been touched by 15.0

 

I think this is releated to either one or both of the following:
1) Fairly advanced Paragraph styles: using nested styles, grep styles and Character styles
2) Using "Create Alternate Layout" with using "Copy Text Styles to New Group"

Mac OS 10.14.6
Mac OS 10.13.6

 

Anyone else seen this? I really regret updating to 2020.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Håvard Graudo

    Fixed in version 16. ("2021")

     

    If you have a corrupt document made with an earlier version it will not be fixed by opening it with version 16 however. But v. 16 should not trigger this again.

    4 replies

    M
    mmiummiu
    Known Participant
    September 12, 2021

    Hey, did this get fixed? I seem to have the same problem and 2 hours later I have a corrupt file, no response from Adobe (no human support that is) and constantly crashing files. And no chance to fix them at all. 

    H
    Håvard GraudoAuthorCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    September 13, 2021

    Fixed in version 16. ("2021")

     

    If you have a corrupt document made with an earlier version it will not be fixed by opening it with version 16 however. But v. 16 should not trigger this again.

    M
    mmiummiu
    Known Participant
    September 13, 2021

    It does trigger it. I guess I have a different issue that sounds similar (after all, I'm not on Mac but on PC). I installed v. 16 yesterday, removed it and then installed it again today just to trigger the same crash I've been getting from v. 15. Adobe Support has been ignoring me since yesterday, there's basically nobody available to help. Currently trying to figure ways to retreive the file via idml export. 

     

    My issues are the following:

    - I open the file

    - the moment I enter a text box it freezes and crashes

    - reopening Indesign apparently makes it try to recover files, which crashes it immediately

    - I have to open ID again, which triggers a prompt to recover the latest file (if I click yes, it crashes again). Basically after every crash I have to open ID twice. 

    Baroquenz2
    Baroquenz2
    Participating Frequently
    April 23, 2020

    I'm having the exact same issue with major crashes when working with or creating alternative layouts in InDesign 2020 however mine is PC based and it corrupts the entire document leaving it virtually unusable. It also corrupts idml if I open that as well. Very frustrating and has created a LOT of extra work.

    jane-e
    Community Expert
    jane-eCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 24, 2020

    Hi

    You can send the files to Adobe at this email address:
    corrupt_indesign_docs@adobe.com

     

    This is a user forum. If you want to report it to Adobe, you can do so here : 

    https://indesign.uservoice.com/

     

    H
    Håvard GraudoAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 7, 2020

    The below sequence seems to be a sure way of crashing Adobe InDesign and end up with a corrupt document:

     

    1) Create new A4 document
    2) Draw a text-box on page 1 and fill it with Placeholder text
    3) Make a new paragraph style and assign that style to the text
    4) Go to Page -> Create Alternate Layout
    5) Select Page Size A3, choose "Scale" and check "Copy Text Styles to New Style Group"
    6) In the Pages panel: Delete the alternate page you just created *
    7) Repeat step 5; creating the alternate layout again with the same settings
    😎 Save the document somewhere as "my corrupt document.indd" **
    9) Go to the alternate page and select the textbox. Boom! Beachball of death.

     

    If you try to open that document again InDesign will crash if you touch the textbox on the alternate page

    The above sequence does *not* crash InDesign 2019

    Mac OS 10.14.6
    Mac OS 10.13.6

     

    This is the shortest way I can reproduce this across several Macs

     

    * it does not seem to be a difference between deleting the page only or delete the entire Alternate Layout
    ** saving is just to show that the document is corrupt. The error will show up either it is saved or not.

    H
    Håvard GraudoAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 7, 2020

    Got confirmation from Adobe on this:

    "We have been able to reproduce the bug and currently investigating the issue."

    jane-e
    Community Expert
    jane-eCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 7, 2020

    Hi

    Please report this bug to the product team here so it can be tracked (if you have not done so):

    https://indesign.uservoice.com/

    and post the link back here so others can vote.

    ~ Jane

    jane-e
    Community Expert
    jane-eCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 2, 2020

    Hi

    You can send the files to Adobe at this email address:
    corrupt_indesign_docs@adobe.com

    If the files is larger than 10 Mb, you can zip (and password protect) the file and upload to your Creative Cloud account (or Dropbox) and email the document link.

     

    ~Jane

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