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.

To tie off this discussion: first off, thanks to everyone for their advice (particularly over a holiday!). Document is now stabilized, through a combination of rebooting, reinstalling, font cache cleaning, preference trashing, patience, and rebuilding. I opened a version of the document that I’d completed before the freezing/crashing went out of control, deleted chapter 4, which is where the problems seemed to be concentrated. I then rebuilt chapter 4 in a new file, taking the text — but no hard returns — from the Word source file. I saved copiously, and then inserted the new chapter into the main document. This seems to have worked. My question is, when you have identified a corruption in a particular spot in an InDesign document, how do you root it out? (Creating IDML files did not help in this case.)

I cleaned out the font file cache and was then able to work with MOST of the document. However, there seems to be something nasty and corrupt in one chapter which, when I get close to it, makes the program crash.