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InDesign extremely slow; practically unusable

New Here ,
May 17, 2021 May 17, 2021

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Hi,

 

It probably started a year or so ago. Whenever dealing with big files imported from Word with lots of footnotes, InDesign slows to a crwal. Everytime I try to make an edit, InDesign stalls for a long time, sometimes over a minute. I have tried the different suggestions made in posts about slow performance to no avail. 

 

I started seeing this issue when I imported a Word doc created on Windows that contains Arabic text. About 350 pages with about 600 footnotes. InDesign was unusable. I had to split the doc into 16 files and use a book file to put the book together for it to be possible to use InDesign. Even then, I had to disable automatic Preflight for it to be possible to use the app. The same is happening with a new file that contains Arabic text with lots of footnets and a similar page count. This time, I broke the file into bigger chunks (40–60 pages) and it's a little better, but it's still too slow. 

 

Something that should take minutes can take hours, if not days. I have been using InDesign for years and before that used FrameMaker for 15+ years and I never expreienced something like that. Not sure if it only happens with Arabic text, but something is horribly worng with the design of InDesign. Not sure what to do?  

 

It appears to be related to footnotes. I created a copy of the latest doc with about 300 pages and 550 footnotes and deleted all of the footnotes. The doc started responding and I was able to add text and table rows without a problem. I even duplicted the text so that the doc was over 600 pages and there was some delay, but once the text was duplicated, I was able add text and make edits without having to wait for a long time between edits.

 

What can be done to deal with this issue? 

 

Note: A colleagure experienced slow performance when I sent him an InDesign doc with 120 pages of Arabic text. He could edith th emain text with no issues, but anytime he tries to edit the footnotes, InDesign becomes too slow.

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New Here ,
May 17, 2021 May 17, 2021

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MacBook Pro 13-inch 2019 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 16 GB 

macOS Big Sur

Had same issue with macOS Catalina

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Community Expert ,
May 18, 2021 May 18, 2021

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I never had so many footnotes in one document, I don't have any suggestions right now, will see others what they say about footnote experience.

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New Here ,
May 18, 2021 May 18, 2021

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Thank you! InDesign is just unusable. I have seen many posts about beyond poor performance in relation to docs with lots of footnotes for English text. So it's a common problem. They've known about it for some time and are not doing anything to fix the problem.

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