Can no longer dock my panels in InDesign 2021 on Windows 10

[DKingDesigner]

Indesign crashed on me several times today. When I finally was able to get it to open, my saved workspaces were empty of panels. When I tried to recreate the workspaces, I discovered that nothing would dock into the sides of the application window like I had them before. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Indesign and reset my preferences, and I still can't get any of my panels to dock into the sides like they did before. All the posts I can find on this problem are pretty old. Anyone have any thoughts how I can fix this? Floating panels hide my documents, and that screen real estate is pretty valuable. I need the panels to dock minimized so they don't hide what I'm working on. This problem is only in InDesign. My other Adobe apps are still allowing me to dock panels to the sides. 

Windows 10 Pro 20H2, Indesign 16.0.1

[DKingDesigner]

So I managed to fix it by uninstalling Indesign 2021 completely. Purging it off my computer from every app data folder, etc., and reinstalling the previous version for which I still had all my preferences. I then opened InDesign 2020 and made sure it had all my workspaces and preferences, closed it and reinstalled 2021 with the option checked to pull preferences from the previous version. I'm back up and running with a proper installation. Would still love to know what messed up 2021 so badly. A couple of app crashes shouldn't so thoroughly trash an application.

[Dan Rodney · Accepted solution]

Sometimes preferences can go bad and make InDesign act strange. Before reinstalling you should try resetting your preferences: Troubleshooting 101: Replace, or "trash" your InDe... - Adobe Support Community

In that post they meantion a keystroke you can hold while launching InDesign to trash the prefs. Many times that will be enough so you don't have to reinstall the entire app.

[Dan Rodney]

Resetting prefs do not remove saved workspaces, so hopefully once prefs are reset the workspaces would act normally again.

[DKingDesigner]

Hey, thanks for the suggestion, but if you look in my original post, I did say that I had reset preferences. It was the second thing I tried. The application simply would not let me dock any of the panels into the application window. It was the oddest behavior. I don't think it was a preferences issue. When I reset the preferences, none of the default workspaces were working either. Removing the application completely seemed to be the only fix. Something really got messed up. 

[Dan Rodney]

Sorry I missed that. While I primarily use InDesign on a Mac, I have used it on Windows (and teaching people on both platforms) and this is the first I've heard of the issue. So hopefully this will be a one time thing. It certainly is unusual behavior.

[Ashutosh_Mishra]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about your experience. I see you have fixed the issue by removing the app completely & installing it again. I also agree with Dan's suggestion about resetting preferences. In the future, please try suggestions given on this community post(https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/resolve-slow-performance-and-unexpected-behavior-of-indesign...). Hope it helps.

Regards,

Ashutosh

[DKingDesigner]

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. If you look in my original post, I did say that I had reset preferences. It was the second thing I tried. The application simply would not let me dock any of the panels into the application window. It was the oddest behavior, and I don't think it was a preferences issue. When I reset the preferences, none of the default workspaces were working either. Removing the application completely seemed to be the only fix, which I see was one of the troubleshooting suggestions in the article you linked to. Thankfully, I'm not a newbie to InDesign (been using it since version 1) and was working through the usual troubleshooting steps before/after I asked for input. I was posting here more or less wondering if anyone else had ever seen the behavior before and to document my fix in case anyone else had the problem and searched the forum for help. Thanks again!

[DKingDesigner]

 So, just an FYI to an old post. I've now had this happen to me four times. InDesign crashes, and when I reopen it, my customized workspace is reset to no panels open at all. I open my panels and try to recreate the workspace and nothing will dock on the right side of the application frame. I have now had to uninstall and clean 2021 completely off my computer and reinstall it, pulling preferences from the older version of ID that I've kept on my computer just so I will have my workspaces to recover when I install 2021 again. This is getting really old.