Indesign crashing and files becoming corrupted

[austin_headley]

Since updating my team's InDesign to the latest version the program has been crashing and we've also been losing files. They become corrupted and cannot be opened or recovered by Adobe's support.

Unfortunately I don't have much more information than this - we think it might be related to having files open while IT software runs backups (so related to the lock file and access issues when this backup program is trying to access it). But honestly we have no idea what the problem may be. I know that IT has had some issues this week with the drive freezing/crashing while trying to run a backup, and having to restart the server while we have things open, but I find it strange it only seems to be an issue with InDesign files as far as I can tell.

[SanyamTalwar]

Can you share few documents with us that are corrupt at santalwa@adobe.com

[austin_headley]

WeTransfer Here's a link to one of the files.

[Laubender]

Hi Austin,

out of curiosity I checked your InDesign document with an ExtendScript script tool by Werner Perplies—WpsIndFileIdentifier.jsx—that is able to read version info from an InDesign file without opening it in InDesign.

Script can be found here (you have to log in to download it):

WpsIndFileIdentifier - Skript - Adobe® InDesign® Automatisierung

Message from the script (translated from German):

Warning:
File length is:
24576000
File length should be:
26001408
The file seems to be corrupt.
InDesign-Version:CC2018.0.0(125), Built: 13.0.0.125

Did not try to open the file with InDesign.

EDIT: Further a log file is written that documents the saved states of the document:

Macintosh, 10.105 - InDesign-Version: CC2017.1.0(568) - Version: 12.1.0.568
Macintosh, 10.105 - InDesign-Version: CC2017.1.0(568) - Version: 12.1.0.568
Macintosh, 10.105 - InDesign-Version: CC2017.1.0(568) - Version: 12.1.0.568
Windows, 6.1 - InDesign-Version: CC2018.0.0(125) - Version: 13.0.0.125
Windows, 6.1 - InDesign-Version: CC2018.0.0(125) - Version: 13.0.0.125
Windows, 6.1 - InDesign-Version: CC2018.0.0(125) - Version: 13.0.0.125
Windows, 6.1 - InDesign-Version: CC2018.0.0(125) - Version: 13.0.0.125

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

Hi Austin,

Werner—the author of WpsIndFileIdentifier.jsx—pointed at a tool that may be useful to restore corrupted InDesign files:

Repair corrupt InDesign Adobe files on Mac OS X

Maybe that's something for you.

The discripton of the software says that (currently) all versions of InDesign from CS5.5 to CC 2017 are supported.

Your file was saved with CC 2018, but maybe you are in luck and the tool is working for you. Otherwise contact the makers of the tool and see if a beta-version for CC 2018 is in the make…

EDIT: Ah. Forgot: Stellar Phoenix InDesign Repair is only available for Mac OSX.
But maybe you have a Mac at hand with CC 2018 installed…

Regards,
Uwe