Yesterday, I was working on a client project and ran into a really weird InDesign CS4 problem.
I’ve been using IDCS4, but my client still uses IDCS3. The client sent me an IDCS3 file without the links and asked me to make changes to the design. I didn’t need the links because I was just going to move things around on the page and make the layout look nicer. The CS3 file opened in CS4 with no problems, other than the missing links. The names of the missing links were displayed in the Links panel with the missing link icon next to them, which is normal behavior. The file also displayed low-res previews of the missing images in the layout for reference, as it should.
When I finished cleaning up the page, I saved the revised layout as an INX CS3 file and sent it back to my client. When they opened the INX file in IDCS3, the missing links appeared as grayed-out frames in the layout (no previews) and the Links panel did not display their names correctly. Instead, every one of the missing links was listed as “fo” in the Links panel, which left no way for my client to reference the missing links and relink them.
This appeared to be a bug of some sort, and a pretty bad one. I used to export files containing missing links from IDCS3 to INX CS2 all the time and never ever had this problem. After testing this strange behavior myself and getting the same results, I decided to ask David and Anne-Marie if they had by any chance experienced the same problem. Anne-Marie did some tests and came up with the same issue.
Essentially, in order to export as INX in IDCS4 without a missing link problem, you have to have all the supports linked at all times. It appears as though the new features in the CS4 Links panel are not translating well through INX CS3. This means that your clients will always have to provide the links, which is a major hassle for them to have to collect and upload to a server for every small layout change that needs to be made. The only other option is to use IDCS3 for all client projects that were created in CS3 and stop using IDCS4. Considering that the majority of my design clients are still using IDCS3, this renders CS4 pretty much useless.
We’ve contacted Michael Ninness, senior product manager for InDesign at Adobe, and he has notified the development team about the problem. They’ve confirmed that it is indeed a bug, and are “officially investigating it.” Hopefully, the development team will find a fix for this problem and it will be repaired with the next update.
This article was last modified on December 13, 2022
This article was first published on January 22, 2009
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