Reply To: HELP! big important indesign cc 2020 file keeps freezing

There was a particular point in my document where the corruption seemed to be: whenever I tried to touch or manipulate the text frame or text in that spot, the document would freeze. So I went back to a version of the document where the crashing hadn’t been so intense (essentially losing a day of work). I opened that version, deleted the offending text (actually the entire chapter), and then rebuilt that chapter from the source Word file by bringing the text WITHOUT any hard returns (since hard returns are where Word stores codes). Erring on the side of caution, I rebuilt the new chapter in a separate file and then, once I was sure it was corruption free, incorporated it into my book. I saved CONSTANTLY; also did periodic “save as”; and frequently exported to IDML. This might have been overkill, but I was taking no chances.

I also cleaned out my font cache files, reinstalled Indesign, trashed my preferences, and rebooted the computer after each major change. These might have helped; impossible to say. Of all of them, I think cleaning the font cache was most useful.

Good luck; this sure can be a nightmare.