About once a month, on Tuesdays (weekly press day here at Arkansas Times,) I can expect something maddening and frightening to happen to my document in InDesign. I will try to describe what it looks like, but it may be best shown through a screenshot I’ve saved if that is possible.
While we (our editors and myself) are hot and heavy editing via InCopy and myself on InDesign, pages just disappear. Kind of. Put another way, only the shadow and outline of the spread is left on each spread, with no “white” page. All of the copy and images are still there where it is supposed to be. But the grey of the pasteboard is behind it. Folio numbers now say PB, for pasteboard. Meanwhile, over in the Pages panel, the pages in question are completely blank, showing no content.
Of course, those pages cause any PDF export to fail, and will not print. There is no way to undo this as far as I can tell, and WHEN it happens always seems to be under the radar. Meaning, I’ll be moving along, laying out pages and I’ll look up and see the bug has occurred on a length of pages, usually at least one full spread, sometimes up to 5 spreads. The only solution I’ve come up with is to cut the content, delete the spread from the Pages panel (because it still thinks they are there,) insert a new spread with whatever master applied, and then paste in place. (This works just fine if there is not copy flowing from one page into it, or out of it. If there is copy jumping to another page, you have to really plan ahead to avoid major errors in the reading experience. Even worse, if you have made assignments for InCopy out of anything, things can really fall apart. But that is more me gripeing more than anything.)
I can not detect any triggers for this problem. So I’m going to just list what I do know below and see if it inspires any insight from you good people!
• Typically happens during heavy use, and often when people are editing via InCopy, but I think the first time it happened was before we started using InCopy.
• All versions of InCopy in use are up to date, and I’m running InDesign 2015.0 release, build 11.0.0.72
• The bug happens whether or not I’ve saved backup copies.
• My live file is saved on a server in our building. Not locally on my computer.
• I’ve wondered if the bug happens during a save, because I save often, but haven’t been able to catch any correlation between the two. Mostly because I save without thinking most of the time.
• I’m running OSX 10.10.5 on a 27-inch, Mid 2011 iMac
When this bug happens I’m usually extremely pressed for time and can’t stop to experiment with solutions so I may not have tried some of the things one would normally try to solve this. Any thoughts? And thanks in advance!
Bryan
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