It's completely updated. Was before this all started.  Here are all the facts as I know them about the crashing. Hope someone can come up with an idea.

1) Sent my CS5 to someone in the IDML because she has CS4. She did the Index for me, and sent back to me. Crashing starts. Index issue??? If so, what??

2) Crashing occurs when I'm trying to make changes in text: when I press delete at the top of the page (to bring back page which pushed over to next page), when I try to delete a section, changing the font of a heading, doing the 4th bullet of four items (first three bullets were fine; fourth one crashes me), doing a full return to add a space (very common reason for crashing), etc.

3)  I have been unable to make another CDML–it stops about 45 pages from the end on "Graph 50″. I looked at my errors–found a huge body in inset on the page right about Graph 50 that I didn't need. Got rid of the inset. Could the crashing be from something in Graph 50 alone?

4) Trying to do Split Story crashes Indesign

5) Crash report–does it have something to do with the "library"??? If so, how do I find this?

0   libsystem_c.dylib                  0×92521b4a memmove$VARIANT$sse42 + 397

1   PublicLib.dylib                    0×01303e87 CTextAttributeSuite::ChangeParagraphDirection(ICompositionStyle::Para graphDirection) + 20359

2   PublicLib.dylib                    0×01161a19 UIDList::Append(IDType<UID_tag>) + 57

3   com.adobe.InDesign.AppFramework     0×0b9321db 0xb910000 + 139739

4   com.adobe.InDesign.Generic Page Item     0×115119df GetPlugIn + 1416831

5   com.adobe.InDesign.AppFramework     0×0ba2348a GetPlugIn + 976634

6   com.adobe.InDesign.AppFramework     0×0ba236c3 GetPlugIn + 977203

7   com.adobe.InDesign.Layout          0×11b16a34 GetPlugIn + 17220

Oops. Thank you and just did the update....and Indesign still crashed when I tried to do a hard return. What do you think?

http://pastebin.com/3jDgWBni

I'm a neophyte in all this. I found something called cocktail to clear the font caches. Is that what I should used? If not, can you send me to where I can learn how to do this?

OK, I got cocktail from here: http://www.techspot.com/downloadget.php?id=3219&file=1&evp=9a984e48a73 1f329854eb2d162eec010  And upon perusing it, it looks like it would just clear caches on my computer! I have to figure out how to use it just for Indesign......

I'll try it Mannish and see. I'll also see what happens when I move the document and thanks for the instructions.

(See my update above.)

NEW UPDATE: Peter and Manish-Sharma, I've been playing around with things for hours. I first put the Index into Word and then removed the formatting once in Word. I went to a Copy of my book within Indesign, removed the Index, and placed the Word index in I had just made.  Indesign STILL crashed if I tried to do a hard return. I was stymied.

BUT, I decided to try all over again to make an IDML file out of the Copy which now had the unformatted Index....and THAT worked unlike all previous failures. And voila, I am able to do a hard return without it crashing...though it gives me that multi-color turning disc. But it goes away and Indesign still sits there. This is a major miracle.

Now I want to see if I can continue to keep it up while doing the needed corrections. Will report back.

Peter, I definitely found out how complex it is. But taking the index out, turning it into Word, inserting that, then reformatting it worked wonderfully. Thank you for your great help!!

Yes, the page numbers are still correct.  They were just a lot of minor changes throughout that the crashing was preventing me from doing, such as adding another space in front of a few headings, changing the font size in several headings, fixing a footnote here or there, etc. 97% of the book was finished when this crashing happened with the Index.

For future reference, what is your favorite way to do the Index?