A number of factors could partially or completely corrupt Adobe InDesign files. The corruption could severely damaged various InDesign elements including – Media Objects, Notes & Footnotes, TOC, Bookmarks, layers, Text, Images, Tables, Standard Shapes Special Characters, Animation, Hyperlinks and Cross-references. Even a single INDD element affected with the corruption would lead to abrupt behaviour of InDesign document. This behaviour may lead to sudden crash of INDD document, unexpected freezing of the InDesign application or loss of InDesign files. Sharing useful 6 tips to repair INDD files on Mac OS X.
1) InDesign Troubleshoot on Mac OS X
InDesign application has a helpful feature know as Document Recovery that helps restores the lost INDD files. This recovery feature can restore files that have been interrupted and damaged by sudden power outage and system issues. Unfortunately, InDesign files corrupted due to other reasons including malware, viruses, disk crash, disk errors, bad permissions, software glitch couldn’t be handled by the Document Recovery feature.
2) Fix Mac Disk Permissions
Through Disk Utility, repair Mac hard drive with options such as – Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions. The permission “differs” for InDesign files may be one of the reasons for damaged INDD documents. By repairing the disk errors, corrupt InDesign files can be recovered. Once disk check has been done, re-launch the InDesign application and view your INDD documents.
3) Disk Maintenance
Do check if the hard drive requires maintenance other than disk repair. For instance, the Mac hard drive may be choking due to lack of free spaces. You can check the files storage on Mac hard drive through Storage. To access Storage follow the path:
Apple Logo<<About This Mac<<More Info<<Storage
Do perform disk cleaning by removing junks files from startup drive so that more room for InDesign application is made. And yes, make sure the RAM consumption is honest since low RAM could result in frequent freezing of the application.
User can also choose to try to save the InDesign files to an external hard drive.
4) Re-name & Save corrupt InDesign document
After each applied tip, make sure to close the INDD application and launch it again. To open the InDesign file after fresh launch follow below method:
Goto File << Open << Select the InDesign file << Copy << Rename the InDesign file and check
5) Compatibility
Make sure the version of the InDesign file and the OS X are compatible. Else use software Help << Updates
Conclusion
Hope the blog will be a helpful platform to fix corruption of the InDesign files on macOS
About The Author
Vishal is a data recovery expert @Stellar. He addresses data loss scenarios on a Mac. He intends to help people solve their macOS problems. Besides, Vishal prefers to read about astronomy and autobiography, and his favorite is Steve Jobs - The man who thought different written by Karen Bluementhal.
I upgraded to Mac OS X El Capitan this morning and now I can’t print from InDesign CS4. When I hit the print button, I get the spinning pinwheel of death and then InDesign crashes continuously.
Please tell me the solution of this problem?
Mac OS X (10.11)
Hi Sandra,
InDesign corruption is a common problem on Mac. You can take the help of Stellar Repair for InDesign software to fix your corrupt INDD file in few simple steps.
My InDesign document CS5.5 table is locking up every-time. My attempts to delete the table from the document resulted in crashing of the INDD file. This is getting repeated every time I try to delete this entity. Can someone let know whats going wrong in my file?
Hi David.
Seems like the elements of the InDesign files are corrupt and causing the abrupt shutdown of the application. To prevent any further damages to the document I would suggest you not to open this file. Stellar Repair for InDesign software for Mac supports repairing of CS5.5 version. Please download the trial version of the software and scan this file. In the trial version the software will preview the repaired document.
Thanks!!
Do I need registration key for Stellar Repair for InDesign activation. BTW what is the asking price?
Hi Jaime,
Thanks for your inquiry!!
Yes, you need Stellar Repair for InDesign Software registration key in order to save repaired INDD files to Mac hard drive. You can complete the registration formalities by visiting this webpage. Once registration is made you will receive the Stellar Repair for InDesign activation code within 24 hours on your registered email id. And the asking price of the software is $99 for Single user and $299 for Technicians.
Thanks
Do I need to buy the software to repair single corrupt InDesign file? Doesn’t demo version repair some files for free?
Hi Rosie,
Registration is required to repair even a single or multiple corrupt InDesign files. The demo version allows free preview of repaired files however you need to activation key to save the files. Hope this helps.
Thanks.