INDESIGN FREEZES WHILE TRYING TO CONVERT TO EPUB

[nadabutamor]

Hi everyone!

I’m doing an ebook for a client and I’m trying to convert it to EPUB, but whenever I click “OK” to convert, my InDesign freezes and the rainbow wheel comes up and keeps spinning and spinning. I waited for it to load and hopefully convert for an hour or so but it wouldn’t budge. So I would always have to force quit InDesign. Here are the specs:

– Page size is 5.25×8″
– The eBook has been divided per chapter and has about 10-20 pages per chapter

- I tried exporting the whole Book file to EPUB, it would still get stuck

– I tried exporting the title page to epub; which is about 5 pages, and it would still get stuck
– I’m exporting to EPUB Reflowable 2.0.1
– The only images on it is a small moon on the chapter pages, and the title of the book on the title page
– I’m using InDesign CC 2017.1 on Mac Sierra 10.12.6
– Fonts are Avenir Roman & Oblique, Charcuterie Block, and Ashbury Light

I’ve been trying to fix this problem for a while now and I’m running short on time as the deadline is this week! Help!

If you need any other information to help solve this, I’ll gladly provide it!

[BobLevine]

What does "stuck" mean? Can you do anything else? Do it crash or just hang? Is there a crash/hang report?

Are all fonts OpenType with no embedding restrictions? Have you tried EPUB 3? Are you exporting to a local drive or a network drive?

[Derek Cross · Accepted solution]

When you state "convert", is this a print book that you are now exporting to Reflowable Text ePub, or have you set it up especially for this purpose as an ePub?

Things like page size and number of pages (and anything on a Master page) are irrelevant in this context.

What messages do you get when you try and validate the ePub: EPUB Validator (beta)

By the way, the fonts you want to use do not seem be available from Typekit which means you'll probably have to buy licenses to use them for an ePub.

[kyriosity]

Y'know what'd be suuuuuper-duper nice? If Adobe could give us an error message about this rather than just freezing.

[Derek Cross]

Can you supply more details, you're rather perfunctory with your message.

[kyriosity]

Sorry...I was replying to the gist of your post -- that epub export freezing may occur because of a font licensing issue. I finally figured out that was the problem I was having this morning, and an error message would have saved me mucho time. Once I finally knew that it might be a font issue, it took about a minute to do Type > Find font > change the unlicensed font to a licensed one. Whereas freeze, freeze, freeze, restart, restart, restart, reexport, reexport, reexport, lather, rinse, repeat in dumb, blind frustration sucked up an hour.

[nadabutamor]

Hey everyone!

Thanks for getting back to me on this. I managed to fix the issue. It was the Avenir text. Although I did buy the license for it, it gave me this issue. But once I changed it to a different version of Avenir, it went through perfectly and I got the EBook sent out and approved by the client.

So it was the font problem. Just changed it and the file got exported to ePub nicely.

Thanks again Derek and Bob!

[saramason]

How did you check the fonts? I didn't have an issue in preflight but indesign crashes everytime I try to export the epub.

[nadabutamor]

I go to Type>Find Fonts to check all the fonts in the document and when I messed around with the fonts and changed it, I figured out that it was a font that was the cause of all the freezing and crashing.

Hope that helps!