InDesign 2019 randomly hangs - only while opening or closing documents on macOS

[Wolandit_IT]

Indesign 2019 (14.03) randomly but consistently hangs while opening or closing documents. It does this with a multitude of different files without regularity and without warning. Sometimes it opens smoothly five documents and then hangs on the sixth, sometimes it opens two and hangs on the third. Sometimes it also hangs on close (not on save). Sometimes it also hangs on the recovery process, but usually it opens up again just fine. I never use "recovered" versions anyway.

Also, sometimes I close a document and it seems just fine, then I close Indesign just fine, THEN I open it again and it "recovers" the document it had regularly saved and closed before.
This tells me that for some reason sometimes the program cannot get rid of the recovery copy when closing the file.

No previous version has exhibited this behaviour. System is macOs Catalina. It seems to be getting more frequent lately, but maybe just because I'm using this version more than before.
I also have 2020 installed, and it doesn't present the problem, so far.
I have no third party plugins.
It maybe relevant that the vast majority of these indd files are inside a synced dropbox folder. I use indesign files on dropbox folders since CS6 and i never had any problems, could it be? I will try moving some work in a non shared folder and see what happens, anyway.

I already tried resetting preferences. Maybe I'll try rebuilding the caches? Any other ideas?
Wouldn't like to reinstall as the version isn't distributed by Adobe anymore, so I'd have to download installers from the internet.

I'm attaching the macos log from the crash.

Thanks

{Renamed by MOD}

[Wolandit_IT]

I would like to add, the bug occours with any means of file opening: right click Open with, recent files menu, drag and drop from finder.  Can't try with double left click because that always opens file with the latest version of indesign installed, which is 2020, not 2019.

[Dirk Becker · Accepted solution]

Do you use any font manager? In your process report, there in the top/main thread see that deepest cluster of "FontBase-InDesign-Mac". Ah, looking down the binary is "com.adobe.InDesign.FontBase-InDesign-Mac", so with this "com.adobe" prefix it should be something from Adobe. Not present with my copy of InDesign though. Google for "FontBase" - hmm, someone should definitely have used their own domain for the bundle ID!

The actual call is "select" - waiting for network activity.

So, my guess is remove "FontBase" and your live will improve. Or check your network, firewall policies etc.

[Wolandit_IT]

Wow! In fact I do have a font manager called FontBase - but I never use it, and Adobe activation plugins should be deactivated since I don't have the paid version of the software that includes them. I guess it is active all the time even when not open? I'll try updating it or uninstalling it.

Thanks

[Wolandit_IT]

Also thanks for the clue on how to read the logs, I just switched to Mac last year  after 20 years on windows, and I was at a loss.

[Wolandit_IT · Accepted solution]

There was an inactive fontbase plugin in the plugin folder, causing the hangs.
I removed it as I use the font manager manually anyway.

Thanks

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

So sorry to hear about this trouble. If I get it correctly, InDesign is crashing while opening or closing files. I am hopeful that the issue is resolved by updating or removing Font manager as suggested above. If not, I would request if you could try these steps and share your observations with us:

• Try copy pasting few files on Desktop and check how it works from there.
• If it shows the same behavior, rename CEP folder from   /Library/Application Support/Adobe  to CEP.old  
• If that doesn't help either, rename extensions folder from /Library/Application Support/Adobe/UXP to extensions.old 

• If nothing works please try the steps shared on this page (https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/resolve-slow-performance-and-unexpected-behavior-of-indesign... ).

While performing each step, please make sure that InDesign and other Adobe apps are closed. 

Feel free to let us know if you still need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Regards,

Srishti