InDesign CC 2017 Plugins are not loading from Plug-Ins folder.

[RJ9191]

I have compiled and build Plugins for InDesign CC 2017, using XCode 7.2.1 on OS X 10.11 using 10.11 Base SDK.

The plugins (.InDesignPlugin) files are in Plug-Ins folder of InDesign Application ( /Applications/Adobe InDesign CC 2017/Plug-Ins). And when I am opening InDesign to test the plugins then I cannot find the plugin anywhere in any menu. Normally for older versions of InDesign (CC 2015, CC 2014) plugins go in Windows menu and i can see the preferences for plugin configuration in Indesign preferences but I cannot locate anything related to my plugins in CC 2017.

InDesign is not even showing me that the plugins are invalid or unrecognized.

How do I troubleshoot this problem?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Manan Joshi · Accepted solution]

Try the following steps to isolate the issue.

1. See if some other plugin compiled on your MAC, do load in CC2017 or not. This will rule out any dev. environment issue, or plugin build issue

2. If you have debug build of InDesign, make a debug build of the plugin. It will give you more information on what is going wrong. Launch InDesign using the Xcode debugger for more information

3. If you just have release version of InDesign, then also launch InDesign using the debugger and see if any breakpoints are hit, monitor the console for any information related to your plugin

4. Make sure all the third party dependencies used by the plugin are present on the machine you are trying to load the plugin

These steps should draw you closer to the reason of the issue you are facing. Revert back with details on these steps, so that we can generate more ideas to further debug.

-Manan

[RJ9191]

I have build two plugins on this MAC both aren't loading in InDesign. What does that mean?

[Manan Joshi]

Could mean multiple things, like

• The build process has issues
• InDesign installation has issues etc

Try building one of the sample plugins shipped with the sdk and see if it loads, if it does not then there is something wrong in the development environment.

-Manan

[RJ9191]

Sample plugins are running just fine and if not build properly InDesign is also showing error message that those plugins are not valid.

But my plugins are not showing anything. Running InDesign from XCode to debug the issue shows following message when InDesign starts:

2017-03-02 19:01:25.082 Adobe InDesign CC 2017[9649:127285] AdobeCrashReporterInitialize: executionTime = 0.086420 seconds

2017-03-02 19:01:25.428 AdobeCRDaemon[9653:127338] Starting CRDaemon

2017-03-02 19:01:53.546 Adobe InDesign CC 2017[9649:127285] Error loading /Applications/Adobe InDesign CC 2017/Plug-Ins/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1.InDesignPlugin/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1:  dlopen(/Applications/Adobe InDesign CC 2017/Plug-Ins/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1.InDesignPlugin/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1, 265): Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libxerces-c.28.dylib

  Referenced from: /Applications/Adobe InDesign CC 2017/Plug-Ins/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1.InDesignPlugin/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1

  Reason: image not found

2017-03-02 19:08:18.036 AdobeCRDaemon[9653:127338] Found Non empty list in getCrashWindowId thus processing further

2017-03-02 19:08:18.036 AdobeCRDaemon[9653:127338]  WindowId before Returning from GetCrashWindowId : (null)

Where AdWrks-CC17.v1.1.InDesignPlugin is the name of my plugin.

Can anyone help me with this?

[Manan Joshi]

As its evident from the logs, your plugin depends upon a dynamic library libxerces-c.28.dylib

Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libxerces-c.28.dylib

  Referenced from: /Applications/Adobe InDesign CC 2017/Plug-Ins/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1.InDesignPlugin/AdWrks-CC17.v1.1

  Reason: image not found

and its missing in your system and hence the plugin does not load. I mentioned this in my point no. 4 of the original reply. Get a hold of this dynamic library and your plugin would load just fine.

-Manan

[RJ9191]

Thank you Manan, I really appreciate your help. I solved the issue.