CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • May 9, 2020 at 6:05 am #1248886
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi, I tried to figure out somewhere to share this but couldn’t find the right topic, so I’m just going to throw it out here in case anyone finds it useful:

    I was having difficulty with an InDesign document all week (it would crash every single time I tried to access the Hyperlinks panel). I knew that saving it as an IDML file (and reopening that) might fix some file corruptions (I probably learned that here!). Only problem was that — although I could save it as IDML — the program would crash again whenever I tried to open the IDML file.

    Solution! I work on a server which I access through a VPN. I saved the IDML file directly onto my laptop and then turned off the VPN. Result was that the IDML file couldn’t find any of its ~200 links. BUT — since it couldn’t find any links — it opened! It opened as a bunch of grey boxes, but a bunch of grey boxes can be saved. :) So I saved it as an InDesign file, reconnected the VPN, and told it to update the links (they all showed up as modified). And that last step took half an hour — and I did it in batches — but afterwards the file worked AND I could use the Hyperlinks panel again. So the round-trip through IDML fixed the Hyperlinks panel problem.

    Confession: I’d like to say that turning off the VPN was just a brilliant idea that I had. But it was actually an accident. ;-) I had rebooted the computer too (in case that helped) and forgotten that rebooting it would turn off the VPN.

    To make this more universal: If you’ve saved as an IDML file and can’t open that, hide its links (change the name of the Links panel or something) and see if you have success that way. I sure am happy that this worked, and I hope that information is helpful to someone else.

    I am looking forward to Creative Pro Week!!! :)

    Phyllis

  • May 9, 2020 at 7:03 am #1248893
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I’m so glad you found that solution, Phillis! Thank you for sharing it, so others can find it..

    Awesome that you can participate in CreativePro Week this year. Looking forward to it.

  • May 9, 2020 at 7:03 am #1248897
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I’m so glad you found that solution, Phillis! Thank you for sharing it, so others can find it..

    Awesome that you can participate in CreativePro Week this year. Looking forward to it.

  • May 9, 2020 at 10:37 am #1249083
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks! And yeah, I can’t wait for Creative Pro. :) Though of course I’ll be happier when it’s in person again!

    See you (virtually) in a few weeks! :)

  • May 9, 2020 at 10:37 am #1249086
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks! And yeah, I can’t wait for Creative Pro. :) Though of course I’ll be happier when it’s in person again!

    See you (virtually) in a few weeks! :)

  • May 11, 2020 at 9:53 am #1249865
    David Dilling

    Member

    Great description and work-around Phyllis. Corrupted images (or fonts for that matter) can often cause an entire InDesign file to go bad. One tip, in general when trouble-shooting a flaky .indd file is to artificially break the links. Which you accidentally did. Just watch out. One of those images could be the root of a future problem… There are a bunch of other very useful corrupt InDesign file tips on this article on InDesign Secrets – https://indesignsecrets.com/corrupt-indesign-file-horror-stories.php

    Friendly Regards,
    David

  • May 11, 2020 at 1:40 pm #1249878
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hey, thanks David!

    Great article! That’s good to know about hiding links to hunt down problems. I haven’t heard that before, though I knew about the INDD-to-IDML file fix. But this week was the first time I ran into an IDML that wouldn’t open. Good to know hiding links can help things open! :) And I have backups to the files, but it wasn’t clear when the problem had started.

    I think in my case the problem was clearly related to hyperlinks. I work with 2 editors who are accessing the file with InCopy. They started tracking each other’s changes, and I think that might have caused InDesign to try to remember the same hyperlink too many times (and maybe that corrupted one of them?). That’s just a guess on my part. I asked them to try to accept each other’s changes more often to see if that helps with file stability (and not making the Hyperlinks panel crash). I did read that other people have had problems with the hyperlinks panel in the past, so maybe it’s a bit bug-ridden in general. I hadn’t had occasion to use it much until recently when we started working on a new online complement for our magazine.

    Thanks, Phyllis

• Author
  Posts