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• • April 24, 2015 at 11:45 am #74931
    Remy Grondin

    Member

    Ever since I upgraded to InDesign CC2014 (Mac), the application frequently crashed when I try to copy text within comments in Acrobat Pro XI. In fact, BOTH Acrobat and InDesign crash when doing so. This is a time-crippler, especially when having to do rounds of corrections in large InDesign documents for my clients.

    I’ve tried to trash my InDesign preferences and start anew, it didn’t work out. I thought it was because I’m on Yosemite (OS X 10.10), but one of my colleagues is starting to experience this behaviour and he’s on OX 10.8. I’ve tried Acrobat Pro DC, but this new iteration is counter-intuitive and I’ve experienced the bug at least once.

    What is causing such a detestable behaviour? Has anyone experienced it and has lived through it to tell the tale (and how it was fixed)?

    Thanks!

  • April 24, 2015 at 3:04 pm #74938
    Alan Gilbertson

    Participant

    I’ve not run into this one, myself, but faced with a situation like this and a deadline I can’t shift, I’d set up a workaround. That would probably be copy from Acrobat, paste to BBEdit (or similar plain text editor), cut from there and paste to InDesign. Tedious, but a lot less tedious than restarting Acrobat and InDesign constantly.

  • April 25, 2015 at 2:17 am #74942
    Biju

    Member

    Thanks Alan Gilbertson, I’m one of them who need to get the good solution. But I’m using Windows. I don’t know either it will work or won’t . I will try by your path soon.

  • April 25, 2015 at 4:11 am #74943
    Remy Grondin

    Member

    The problem often seems to happen when I simply select text in an Acrobat’s comment, so I don’t always have the time to copy it to another application (whether it’s InDesign or a plain text editor). In those times, I open the PDF with Preview and that method is working thus far.

    Alan Gilberston, your workaround can be alternative, but I sometimes really need to be able to open the PDF with Acrobat (text within strikethrough comment aren’t easily visible with Preview) without the application getting down (and dragging its buddy InDesign along with it)…

    Since the crashing can happen when I simply select text in comments, could this be an indicator that some fonts may be responsible?

    • April 26, 2015 at 11:59 pm #74977
      Alan Gilbertson

      Participant

      It’s not impossible that a problem font could be causing this, although it doesn’t seem likely that would cause an issue in both Acrobat and InDesign. (I’ve never come across a case of Acrobat having conniptions over a sketchy font the way InDesign does.)

      A somewhat inelegant workaround that would at least keep things moving while you sort things out might be to export the comments from Acrobat to a data file, then copy/paste from that. (Never use Preview for PDFs. It has too many issues and has been known to drive strong designers to even stronger drink.) Before you waste time trying, the “Export to Word” option will only work if it’s going to the original Word file from which the PDF was created.

      Under the Comments section of Acrobat, choose Export to Data File and select .fdf as the format. It’s a text-only file you can open in any text editor and paste into a fresh document in InDesign. (I’m assuming you don’t have grep capabilities outside of InDesign, so I’m using the GREP search in Id for the next step, but you could equally use a programming editor with grep capabilities.)

      Run this GREP search on the comments document: (.+Contents\()([\u ]+)(.+)

      On each hit, Change using $2 in the “Change to:” field, which will remove all the bric-a-brac and leave you with just the comment text, which you can copy and paste.

    • April 27, 2015 at 5:30 pm #75016
      Remy Grondin

      Member

      If it helps keep things moving, I’ll use any “inelegant” workaround anytime! :)

      I use Preview as my main PDF viewer, as it is faster to load than Acrobat (with less window clutter), but it’s true that’s a nightmare when trying to check comments (a lot of them don’t even appear). As long as it’s just to check a PDF, I use Preview, but for everything else (commenting, creating forms, Javascript, etc.), Acrobat is the way to go.

      So you understand why I really want to know what and why this conflict between InDesign and Acrobat exists! :)

    • April 28, 2015 at 2:37 am #75023
      Alan Gilbertson

      Participant

      There are lots of things Preview doesn’t get right. It’s okay for a quick check to verify it’s the document you want, but things like alternate glyphs and other less-common OpenType features, spot colors with transparency and the comments you’ve run across can all go awry. I’ve had clients call me up in a panic asking why some words had missing letters. My general advice is, if you’re a designer then stick with Acrobat and Reader on either platform. None of the alternatives implement all of the PDF spec.

  • April 25, 2015 at 10:53 am #74950
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Remy have you tried opening the same PDF in Acro 10? (Or any earlier version of Acro or even Reader 9, 10 or XI?) … just to see if there’s something glitchy w/Acro XI.

    FWIW I have not had that prob, running all the same versions you describe.

  • April 25, 2015 at 10:53 am #74951
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Remy have you tried opening the same PDF in Acro 10? (Or any earlier version of Acro or even Reader 9, 10 or XI?) … just to see if there’s something glitchy w/Acro XI.

    FWIW I have not had that prob, running all the same versions you describe.

    • April 27, 2015 at 5:26 pm #75015
      Remy Grondin

      Member

      I did not tried to open it in Acrobat 10. I’ve checked and there is no way I could download it from Creative Cloud.

      However, I could try to use Reader, just to see if the problems is also there.

      I’ve never had this sort of behaviour before updating to InDesign CC2014 (and Acrobat XI was available alongside InDesign CS6, if I remember). So, while I do not know was EXACTLY is causing this, I surmise the fault lies with the new InDesign version…

  • April 28, 2015 at 3:07 am #75024
    Gert Verrept

    Member

    Just a guess, did you try to repair Acro? I had a problem selecting text, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I’m on a win 7 64b, but after repairing (not uninstall and reinstall) all got workng fine again.

    • April 28, 2015 at 4:55 pm #75042
      Remy Grondin

      Member

      I did not. In fact, it didn’t occurred to me to check that avenue! How does one repair Acrobat? Is it roughly the same as repairing InDesign? What are the files to look for, and where?

  • April 28, 2015 at 8:56 pm #75043
    Gert Verrept

    Member

    Under the help menu, repair installation, that’s all.

    • May 4, 2015 at 8:01 am #75139
      Remy Grondin

      Member

      I did not find this entry in the Help Menu scrolldown…

      Anyways, it seems InDesign has decided to be autonomous in its crashing now. I’ve had a few occurences in the past week where InDesign would simply give me the beachball and go into Not Responding state if I tried to save a document, or open one, or just go from one document to another.

      I’ve scrapped its preferences, thinking that would help, but no…

      Something is making InDesign behaving badly, and I don’t know what. Should I consider a uninstall/reinstall of InDesign?

  • May 4, 2015 at 10:11 am #75151
    Betty Taylor

    Member

    Just chiming in to say I have had the same problem.

    Mac running OS 10.10.3 Yosemite. InDesign CC2014 and Acrobat Pro DC.

    Copying changes from a PDF to InDesign. Lots of comments on the PDF (which were added using Preview, but were easier to work with in Acrobat). Working with a comment’s text on the PDF would bring down both Acrobat and InDesign.

    I don’t believe I had the same problem with the previous version of Acrobat (but updating to Acrobat Pro DC deletes the previous version so it would be difficult to go back).

  • September 16, 2015 at 5:50 am #78129
    Remy Grondin

    Member

    It’s been a couple of months now and the problem is still recurring.

    It has happened to me in both Acrobat XI and Acrobat DC, so the problem seems not to be version-related.

    I don’t know why, but I have a hunch that it may be a conflict with a font… I noticed that the problem occurs more often with files using Helvetica (not the OS X one, but a PostScript version). Could this be it? If so, why would the fact of using another version of Helvetica make two Adobe applications to go down crashing?

  • November 19, 2015 at 5:32 pm #79514
    Linda Bergeron Szefer

    Member

    It’s been months since the first post by Remy, but I want to add that this behaviour (Acrobat hanging when selecting text within comments, taking down InDesign with it) has been happening on both my Mac Pro and my iMac for months and still happens daily (Acrobat DC, InDesign CC 2015, Yosemite 10.10.5). Very, very annoying.

    I’m still looking for a solution.

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