@Catherine – did you try exporting to PDF in "foreground"? That means, did you try  the script Marijan Tompa was pointing to?

I don't know if this is still working for InDesign CS6.

You could also try my script "ExportPDF_in_Foreground.jsx" from 2010, that does not change any preferences of InDesign. Just invokes the PDF export menu you are used to in an older method like in InDesign CS4 or CS3.

Save the script to a pure text file in your Scripts Panel folder, you can access it now instantly in the Scripts panel of InDesign.

Double-click the script from the Scripts panel. A window will pop up and you will be asked where to save the PDF, after "ok" the next dialog will show up asking you how the PDF should be named. The edit field is pre-populated with the name of your InDesign file plus ".pdf".

After that it's all like you are used to with the "normal" pdf export menu. Except: you cannot work in InDesign as long as the pdf is exporting. Thus the "Foreground" in its name ;-)

Here is the script:

//ExportPDF_in_Foreground.jsx
//Uwe Laubender
/**
* @@@BUILDINFO@@@ ExportPDF_in_Foreground.jsx !Version! Wed Jun 23 2010 17:08:10 GMT+0200
*/
//DESCRIPTION:PDF-Export in foreground (old school like in InDesign CS4)
 
if(app.documents.length>0){
    var d=app.activeDocument;
    };
else{
    alert("Please open a document to execute export to pdf. Script will be aborted.");
    exit();
    }
if(d.saved == false){
    alert("Save your document first before executing export to pdf. Script will be aborted.");
    exit();
    };
 
var pdfPath = Folder.selectDialog("Folder to save pdf:");
var pdfName = d.name+".pdf";
 
var userDefFileName = prompt("File name:",pdfName,undefined);
 
if(userDefFileName == null){
    exit();
    };
 
var pdfFullName = pdfPath+"/"+userDefFileName;
 
if(File(pdfFullName).exists){
    c=confirm("The PDF-file \""+userDefFileName+"\" is already existing. Do you want to overwrite it?",true,undefined);
    if (c==0){exit()};  
    };
//Error-handling if PDF file override is on and PDF is already opened in an PDF reader app:
try{
d.exportFile(ExportFormat.PDF_TYPE,File(pdfFullName),true,undefined,undefined);
}catch(e){
    alert("Error:\r"+e.message+"\r\r(Line "+ e.line+" in script code.)");
    exit();
    };

I cannot say, if that will help you, 'cause I have no crashes by exporting to PDF with InDesign CS6. Never had those crashes in InDesign CS5 or CS5.5 as well.

But maybe it's a thing with your latest version of Mac OSX.
I'm still on OSX 10.6.8…

Uwe

Message was edited by: Laubender

Thank you Peter for clarifying that.

Hey, there is some workaround here :

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4550204#4550204

Same problems as here.

See message above.

I too was having a problem exporting an InDesign CS6 file to a PDF. The error message simply said, "Could not export PDF". So I tried printing to an Adobe PDF file and noticied that the exporting would hang up on page 12 of a 19-page document. Then I tried to print to PDF using a 3rd party distiller called PDF Complete (http://www.pdfcomplete.com/cms/default.aspx). This 3rd party distiller gave me the error message "There is a problem with a font file on page 12" and it produced a .txt file with the following error:

%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%

%%[Page: 1]%%

%%[Page: 2]%%

%%[Page: 3]%%

%%[Page: 4]%%

%%[Page: 5]%%

%%[Page: 6]%%

%%[Page: 7]%%

%%[Page: 8]%%

%%[Page: 9]%%

%%[Page: 10]%%

%%[Page: 11]%%

%%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: 1.#NAN ]%%

%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%

%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

I went to the "Type" menu and selected "Find Fonts" and tried to eliminate any erronenous fonts, but this did not correct the problem.

After deleting the contents of page 12 (except for what was in the master page), the file exported to a PDF perfectly with no errors.

In the end, I had re-create page 12 of my document, the page that was causing the issue, which is much better than having to re-create the entire document, which incidentally took 20 hours to create the first time.