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Victoria Bampton
Victoria Bampton
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Apr 1, 2008
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InDesign Crashing - Troubleshooting Steps?

May 15, 2012 6:09 AM

Has anyone managed to get the hang of getting InDesign CS6 to, well, stay open?! 

 

I've just tried to open my last book into ID CS6 (Creative Cloud install) to make some changes, but it crashes every time I open the documents.  It then crashes every time thereafter.  When I go clear out the recovery cache, it will then open quite happily until I try to open one of those documents.

 

They were created in CS5.5 in February, and I've just reopened and resaved them in CS5.5 as I initially thought it was falling over linked files that had been updated.  They're not the most straight-forward of files - they use cross-references, toc, index, loads of linked images, had the images resized using Link Optimizer, etc.  But they still work perfectly when opened in CS5.5.

 

I've emailed Zevrix to find out if they know of any incompabilities (waiting on reply) but the files still open quite happily in CS5.5 even on computers that don't have LO installed, so I'm not sure it's that.

 

The machine had Photoshop beta on it (since uninstalled) but nothing to do with InDesign prerelease.

 

So, where do I start troubleshooting?  I've trashed preferences, cleared recovery cache, but I'm not as familiar with InDesign as I'd like to be.  Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Victoria

1541 Views   12 Replies   Latest reply: Victoria Bampton, Jun 19, 2012 12:37 PM
 
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  • Peter Spier
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    1. Peter Spier,
    May 15, 2012 6:25 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    I'd export each document from CS5.5 to .idml, open that in CS6, save with a new name (DON'T overwrite the originals), then add to a new book in CS6.

     

    Cross-doc cross-refs are known to be finicky, by the way.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    2. Victoria Bampton,
    May 15, 2012 7:00 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    Finicky's one way of putting it! 

     

    Thanks, that's looking promising on the first doc.  Do I lose anything by exporting to IDML?  If so, I might finish these updates in CS5.5 and start the next one in CS6 instead.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    3. Victoria Bampton,
    May 15, 2012 7:05 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    Doh.  No, it was CS5.5. that the IDML file opened happily into.  IDML's crashing CS6 too.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    4. Peter Spier,
    May 15, 2012 8:24 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    Mac or PC?

     

    If Mac, can you post the crash report on Pastebin.com and put a link here, please. John is pretty good at analyzing crash reports, and if it's simple I may be able to tell, too.

     

    You say you trashed prefs, but I always feel obligated to mention that it has to be done correctly (ID has multiple files that are involved). See Replace Your Preferences

     

    Another diagnostic step is to create a new user account and try that.

     

    .idml should come through into a newer version without loss of information, and if it's crashing, that means there's probably something wrong specifically in CS6, not in the files.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    5. Peter Spier,
    May 15, 2012 8:26 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    Well, "without loss of information" isn't really true. I should have said without loss of information necessary to rebuild the layout. You strip out a lot of extraneous stuff.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    6. Victoria Bampton,
    May 15, 2012 8:34 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    Thanks for the preferences link.  I think I've got them all.

     

    Yes, Mac version, 10.7.4.  Here's the crash report.  http://pastebin.com/3CGtWVPt

     

    One interesting point - if I open CS5 at the same time as CS6, open the doc in CS5, save it, close it, and immediately open it into CS6, it'll open and convert just fine.  And then I save as and close it, try to open it again and it'll crash again.  I can reproduce that every time on a number of the docs.

     

    I'll try the new account and see if that does the trick.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    7. Peter Spier,
    May 15, 2012 8:47 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    It's crashing in Hyperlinks, which very well may implicate the x-refs, but I'm afraid we're getting out of my league. Hopefully John has a moment to check in....

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    8. Victoria Bampton,
    May 15, 2012 9:03 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    Progress!  It'll open without crashing in the new user account.  Now if I could just figure out why it won't work in my normal one...  I've trashed everything to do with InDesign I can find, emptied out fonts, caches, preferences, erm..... 

     

    I'll keep trying - thanks for all your help Peter!  I'll let you know what finally fixes it.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    9. Peter Spier,
    May 15, 2012 9:10 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    That's encouraging.

     

    See John's list of additonal things to remove from your main profile here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4315274

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    10. Victoria Bampton,
    May 15, 2012 10:33 AM   in reply to Peter Spier
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    I think I'm giving up.  I've uninstalled everything, run the cleaner app, reinstalled.... and it still doesn't like this user account. Unless John has any bright ideas, I think I'm going to have to move everything to a new user account.  I guess end of beta-time's as good a time as any!

     
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  • bsplewe
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    11. bsplewe,
    Jun 19, 2012 12:32 PM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    I was having the same problem, but I think I've figured it out. It looks like the cross-doc cross-refs are getting confused when the files are opened and it tries to update all the cross-refs, maybe because ID is adding [converted] to the filenames? Crash after crash after crash. Anyway, I opened the book, *not* the constituent files. In the book menu, I set the "Automatic Document Conversion," then updated the page numbering. That opens, converts, and saves all the constituent files as CS6 without trying to double-check the cross-refs. Now they seem to open on their own just fine.

     

    I totally agree that cross-doc cross-refs are fragile.  I have dozens in this book, and it is really slow unless all the docs are open because it insists on continually double-checking them.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    12. Victoria Bampton,
    Jun 19, 2012 12:37 PM   in reply to bsplewe
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    Thanks bsplewe

     

    I think I figured mine out in the end too - after I'd completely wiped and reloaded the operating system!  The files were on another drive, and all of the permissions looked perfect for all the files and folders.  I created a clean account, and changed the permissions of the entire data drive to the clean account, and they worked.  So I changed the permissions back to my normal account - and would you believe it, they worked too.  So it must have been a permissions issue somewhere on data drive, although goodness knows where.

     
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