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• • August 30, 2017 at 6:55 am #97126
    Phil Frank

    Participant

    Greetings,

    I’m working on a long, complicated academic book, over 400 pages long, with over 1000 footnotes, and a number of tables. The book, with the tables, was imported from Word, and of course many of the tables fit quite poorly and had to be reconfigured. Today’s problem has to do with one particular table which I am trying to remove so I can recreate it in ID. But whenever I try to delete it ID crashes. I have managed to break it into several parts, but now I can’t even remove any of the parts without crashing. I’m to the point where I’d like to just delete the rest of the book beginning just before that table, and then bring the rest of the document back in from another copy without the poison table. Is there a way to do that without just deleting, because I am unable to do that without crashing. Neither have I been successful in getting the first 300+ pages copied into another (empty) file, because I get crashes when I try that as well. There are also some sections of text that are right to left in the midst of mostly left to right text.

    Any ideas would be appreciated!

    Thanks very much.

    Phil Frank

  • August 30, 2017 at 7:37 am #97127
    Chris Thompson

    Member

    Have you tried exporting the problematic InDesign file to IDML, then using the IDML as a fresh source for the file? Sometimes that clears up corrupted crashy bits.
    Also, does it make any difference they way you delete the troublesome table? i.e. 1. table menu – delete – table or 2. position cursor in text flow and hit delete/backspace.
    Just clutching at straws…
    Chris.

  • August 30, 2017 at 8:03 am #97128
    Kelly Vaughn

    Participant

    I also work on large documents that have complex tables. Sometimes they crash if I even touch them. I sometimes have luck when I take the file to another computer and open it there. Maybe the auto-save data is corrupted. Since the auto-save data is locate don your hard drive, if you move the file to another workstation, it might fix the problem.

  • September 1, 2017 at 7:06 am #97189
    Phil Frank

    Participant

    Hi Chris and Kelly,

    Thank you for your good suggestions. I have now tried them all, but to no avail. I’ve also got the folks on the Adobe ID forum on the job, so maybe between all of us I can find a solution.

    I really appreciate the helpful responses!

    Phil

  • September 1, 2017 at 7:13 am #97190
    Graham Park

    Member

    Can you select the table?
    If you can I would try CONVERT THE TABLE TO TEXT.
    This will probably crash as well but it is worth a try.

    Or if the table is not in the text flow you could try deleting the page with the table from the document.

  • September 1, 2017 at 10:22 am #97195
    Phil Frank

    Participant

    Hi Graham,

    I think this table is poison. Nothing seems to work. And it is part of the text flow, so a good idea but not for this problem.

    Thanks for your input.

    Phil

  • September 1, 2017 at 6:06 pm #97507
    Graham Park

    Member

    Only one last thing I can suggest with no confidence it will work.

    Create a CELL STYLE with a know font, give the cell a fill colour which is obvious and normal text insets. Give this a name.
    Then create a TABLE STYLE that uses the cell style.

    Now apply the table style.
    This should clear any problems in the table, remove any corrupt fonts used etc.

    If you can apply the style you can try to delete the table (or with any luck you might be able to use the table.

    Most likely the whole thing will crash again. But it is worth a try.

  • September 3, 2017 at 9:15 am #97704
    Phil Frank

    Participant

    Thanks, everyone, for all your help and suggestions. What finally happened was that a guy on the Adobe ID forum was able to fix it for me, and saving to IDML was part of the solution.

    Phil

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