Inspiring

Answered

InDesign running slow. Spinning ball constantly appearing.

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
May 18, 2018
45 replies
106238 views

Ok, I'm having CONSTANT slow drag with InDesign. The spinning beach ball appears while I"m doing almost ANYTHING, even after quitting/re-starting the program, and even re-starting the OS. I'm running High Sierra on Mac, with 40GB of memory, so that shouldn't be the issue, but almost anything I'm doing, I'm getting major lag. Any ideas? This is really ridiculous. Thanks!

Correct answer Brad Kumar

If you are still having issues with one of our Extensis products, please contact one of our Support Agents using the link below:

https://help.extensis.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Hi Jeff. I actually did open a ticket with Extensis and a helpful person suggested I temporarily turn off FMCore to see if the problem persisted. Well, I didn't actually turn off the Type Core in preferences, but rather, I turned off the "Enable Document Tracking" option and after that I noticed a SIGNIFICANT improvement to my interruptions… the spinning beach was reduced by I would estimate 80%, so I'm quite happy with the result. Hope this helps some others on this thread. Thanks!

M

mgdibblee

Participating Frequently

Where is "Enable Document Tracking"?

Marc Serre

Participating Frequently

Hello ! You'l find this option in Extensis top bar menu. When extensis is open, go to menu
_Connect Font

_ _ Manage plug ins

Then you'l find that option .

W

wd52

Known Participant

I am beginning to suspect iCloud file upload/download is causing the delays to accessing files, especially after the first change to a file.

Rishabh_Tiwari

Legend

Hi @wd52,

Sorry to hear about the trouble. You can make those files available offline and see if that makes a difference. You can also try the suggestions shared here if InDesign is running slow with files saved locally. Feel free to update the discussion if you need further assistance.

Thanks

Rishabh

W

wd52

Known Participant

Making the files OFFLINE does not help. I suspect that when you open a file, Photoshop marks a new MODIFY date or similar, which causes an iCloud mirroring of the "new" file. This whole thing started perhaps 6-8 months ago ONLY after I updated Photoshop; see my posting history.

Nothing I have tried has helpled. Keeping a picture file totally off iCloud has not helped. I suspect some cache file, or temp file that ADOBE is creating or updating is triggering an iCloud update, causing everything to lock up for 20-40 seconds.

VERY FRUSTRATING for thousands of users of Adobe products, not just Photoshop.

tim824

Participant

THAT IS NOT THE CORRECT ANSWER - I do not have or use Extensis Suitcase. And yes I get that freaking spinning beach ball ALL THE TIME, when working on InDesign Documents that have lots of TABLES (the more, the slower). For instance, I am currently working on 2 large InDesign Documents, 1 is a 250+ product catalog with a few tables, lots of text frames and linked images (I have been a user for 25+ years), it's large yes, some slowness does occur (not much), but then I have another large Manual with about 175 pages that use TABLES (and a lot of them, at least 1 per page, sometimes 2-3) - which makes my InDesign document STUPID SLOW, everytime I select (click) on any table in the document, and I mean any, that freaking spinning beach ball just freezes EVERYTHING for a few seconds, SLOWS my process down considerably, like painfully slow and I want to stick my fist through my iMac. I'm not getting into what type of iMac, how much Memory (RAM), plenty of disc space, everything up-to-date, can't tell you how many times I've trashed prefs, and did everything everyone has mentioned, NOTHING WORKS except removing or NOT USING tables. And those of use who did use Quark (man they dropped the ball when InDesign came on-board) such a good program, terrible managment of their application, going back now isn't even an option, I mean switching the first time from Quark to InDesign was painful, I'm not going through that again and Adobe knows it. Kinda stuck, and that really burns me. Get on board Adobe InDesign and fix your application that I HAVE TO PAY A MONTHLY RENTAL FEE to use and it doesn't work. Seriously I would have switched long ago if it wasn't such a big pain-in-the-ass task. Just freaking burns me!!

C

chuckm1903077

Known Participant

Got it. I've only experienced that on smaller docs, but the tables do seem to be the culprit. However, it seems to be document dependent lagginess. Something is wrong with the individual doc. If I copy the info into a new document, everything seems to solve itself. I realize that isn't an option for a 100+ page doc, but have you exported it to an IDML and then opened that up?

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maks27

Participant

Try this...

Indesign > Preferences > Interface > Options > Live Screen Drawing...change to "Immediate"

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wlym

Known Participant

I really hope this works! I've tried EVERYTHING including uninstalling ID and trashing the preferences and caches but I still get constant beachballing on a top spec'd 2017 iMac with 40GB RAM. This has only been happening since the 2022 "upgrade". Small price to pay to get rid of "Master" Pages I guess. The price-gouging subscription model has really incentivized the wrong priorities…

rob-25437735

Participating Frequently

As the creator of this thread, The solution to this nonsense is to go back to Quark Xpress. I've never stopped using it and it's only ever gotten better once they figured out the odd bugs, and since Quark 2018 it has run smoothly and is faster than ID.

i have to work in InDesign for a company I do contract work for, but for my personal freelance I used Quark exclusively and NEVER have any issues.

Adobe bought Aldus Pagemaker in 1996, improved the UI and released it as InDesign but has NEVER done anything to address some of its major bugs since its initial release!

T

todb92481561

Participant

I was having this problem also. Turned off automatic backups on Time Machine and it fixed the problem ... at least for now. Thanks to this community for all the problem solving that Adobe seems incapable of doing. After using Adobe software for over 25 years, I now feel like their prisoner.

Marc Serre

Participating Frequently

This is my correct answer. I've been affected by this issue for a long time. Tried ajusting font mamnagement settings, toggling indd prefs and other prefs. Theses actions reduced inerty, but did not solve completly the problem.

The solution came while we upgraded significatly our bandwith. We are now on 400 Mg upload.
Since them, the beach ball is now in the closet.

Hope this help the community;

R

rpr

Participating Frequently

I imagine you mean Mbps. 400 Mbps download should be plenty fast and above average. Also are you saying your upload speed is also 400 Mbps?!

Are you using Google Fiber ?

that kind of upload speed simply just isnt available in majoroty of places and should be totally unneccassry for a program like indeisgn to run smoothly.

If you are on Spectrums 400 plan the 400 is the download but the upload maxes at 20 which is still higher upload than typical.

The highest upload speed avaialble to most is a gigabyte plan which all typically seem to have an upload speed of 35.

I personaly at home ( where I do most of my work) use COX's 500 unlimited plan. This is the only provider choice I have in my area and this is the 4th tier in their 5 package offerings – 500 Mbps Download and 10 Mbps upload plan and I am hardlined into the modem on my main computer.

when i upgrading my speed in the first place it's percieved gains in these programs was only temporary so i'd be prepared for it to come back once that cache builds up again.

I could add another $30 to this overpriced $150/ month bill for the next tier Gigablast, but that should be totally unneccessary to run majoroty of adobes software. If I can win games in fortnite with it and stream 4k, Adobe cloud should not be an issue.

Indesign has had 0 useful updates and abilities stripped since it has been moved into the cloud subscription scheme. It's performance to place some images stored locally simply should not be such an ongoing issue or require the fastest internet known to man in order not to crash or freeze up constantly.

Marc Serre

Participating Frequently

Following everyone comments and experiencing the lag myself, just wanted to say that, for me, the Extensis and timemachine workaround did not solve this issue. Recently, we've upgraded our router and our upload download speed was increased a lot. (from 30Mbit/s to 400 Mbit/s) This solved the running beachball indesign episodes.

TomHolmes_G&I

Inspiring

Just adding my voice to this too. Exact same problem – thought it was something to do with wi-fi, but the Time Machine issue checks out for me too. Turning off wi-fi or Time Machine while working is a handy temporary fix, but having this as the permanent 'solution' is not really acceptable on a subscription software that can theoretically instantly send out bug fixes with updates. Been having this problem for a while now and wasting a lot of time watching spinning beachballs when I should be working away on clients' jobs. Clearly a common problem that needs fixing ASAP, not just ignoring or pretending is an isolated issue.

angrytattoo

Participant

For me it seemed to be Google Drive. I turned that off and it solved the beach ball.

Our firewall intermitently blocks my mac from contacting Google drive but it keeps trying and trying....

R

rpr

Participating Frequently

That's interesting, I imagine icloud can cause similiar issues. creative cloud processes run really high in activity monitor when i gt the spinnig ball. Nevertheless, Google Drive, Icloud Drive, Windows OS, Mac OS.... these aren't obscure user needs and part of the contemproary professional environment, one these products are supposed to slide into.

If we were talking about any of the video editing apllications or intensive 3d processing i'd understand more the concept to isolate a workstation but those programs all work much better for me than indesign.

Bridge is useless but premiere and after effects hardly ever bring my production to a crashing halt and decent into madness.

I would abandon Indesign completely if I wasnt using easyCatalog to accomplish what i need to ( if you are wondering, having that plugin installed or not has no noicable effect on stability on any of my machines, I have explored that).

P

PHM Technology Pty Ltd

Participating Frequently

Okay, after more phone calls from Adobe Support than I care to have I have finally found the problem, as confirmed by Adobe customer support who I just got off the phone from. I am staggered at the response, but maybe that is just me.

Adobe InDesign Does not work correctly when running TimeMachine when it is backing up to a network drive or cloud.

According to Adobe this makes it our problem. I am not sure about anyone else, but the idea of Tinme Machine is to protect my data and that cannot be effectively done if I move all my backups to the local machine I am working on. If I get a corruption or issue with the local machine I will not be able to access my Time machine backups and continue to work or protect my clients work.

Its an appauling admission by Adone that they know the fault and that they see this a user issue.

So the only solution that has worked for me is to turn Time Machine off when operating InDesign. I am not going to go into the discussion on how this is not a customer driven solution, if this is what Adobe thinks is okay behaviour for their software.

In my opinion it is not, however the silver linning here is as follows;

Despite a couple of people on this forum saying this must be my problem, I can now say with 100% assurity from Adobe that it is not 'my problme' it is infact Adobe InDesign who does not want to work with a standard, long standing function of MACs - Time Machine.
The solution is to turn off your Time Machine while working on InDesign, if you dare take that risk, given you should always have a current back up.
Adobe have confirmed in my eyes they are definetly not customer driven. Time Machine and its operation has been in existence long before InDesign. Using Time Machine locally on your local machine does not solve the problem, becuase it puts your data at risk.
We can all stop trying to define what the problem is (and its solution), as Adobe have admitted to me in this call that no one should do a back up to an external drive or cloud while using Adobe InDesign (that is plain stupid).
As they see this is a user problem, do not wait for a update to fix this known issue. Find other software is, I guess, your only other soution if what they are suggesting is not viable for you to do.
Finally and most importantly - To all those that suggested I waste copiuous amounts fo time going through Adobe Support guided tasks, again, to solve an obvious problem that was not user designated, you were absolutely 100% wrong according to Adobe support.

Best of luck everyone. Stay safe.

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noneset

Participating Frequently

Well done for getting that admission, youve revealed that they know about it. It say seem small, but this is the first step to them quietly fixing it in a future update, even if they dont admit that its their problem, my bet is they fix it very quietly.

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