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InDesign is very slow

The latest version is virtually unusable. If I select an image or text box on a layout I get a spinning wheel for 10 - 15 seconds. If I try to move something - spinning wheel 10-15 seconds. Try to save a document - spinning wheel 10-15 seconds. Previous versions did not behave this way on this same computer. No other applications behave this way.

My Mac is a late 2012 model, 32Gb RAM, 2 SSD drives; one for the OS / Applications and one for the customer files. GeForce video card (came with the computer with 1Gb RAM.

I have attached a Quicktime video of this behavior. The long pauses between seeing the cursor move are the times when the application has a spinning wheel. Then is works for a minute or two and starts all over again.

Dozens of users in the forums are reporting this problem with this version.

103 votes

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Terry Kauffman shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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CLOSED  ·  Abhinav Kaushik responded  · 

Hello All,

Thank you for your patience all this while.
We had launched our investigation into the matter to get to the root cause of the problem. As the part of our investigation, we had reached out to many of you personally over email.
We have concluded our investigation and have come up with few findings.

1. For many of the users the issue got fixed after updating InDesign to a newer version.
2. For some, the issue got resolved after disabling a third-party application such as Suitecase fusion etc.
3. For few, the issue was intermittent and is no longer reproducible.
4. For majority of the users, the underlying cause of the performance issue was identified to be related to span columns, cross-references, third party plugin etc.

We have created separated threads for these issues and we are now working towards resolving them.

However, over the time this thread has become too generic to serve its purpose effectively. As per your feedback and the outcome of our investigation we have created multiple threads to address each root cause separately and effectively.
If you are facing any slowness in InDesign or seeing any other performance issue, we request you vote for the relevant thread or create a new thread specifying the action/workflow which is slowing you down.
We seek your support in our continuous effort to improve InDesign.

-InDesign Team

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  • terry commented  ·   ·  Report

    Same as the rest - just simple text editing and the spinning ball comes up with every small change. Incredibly frustrating. Adobe? Any comments, tips, help?

  • Scott commented  ·   ·  Report

    Found another possible workaround. Mac OS 10.13.4, InDesign 14.02. Turn off all networking once you have InDesign up and running. Go into System Preferences - Network. Turn off Wi-Fi, if you have on. And turn off Ethernet, if you have on. And any other connections to the internet. You will lose the "cloud" features, but at least you will be able to work.

  • Andreas Dobos commented  ·   ·  Report

    The actual InDesign version 14.02 is simply not usable. Extremely slow, every few seconds the beach ball spins. I found a workaround: as long as I'm working in the .idml file format everything is fine. As soon as I open an .indd-file it slows down extremely, regardless if it is in front or back.

    This cannot be. Why don't you see that. Do you even test the software?

  • Mitchell Meek commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yep, this is getting old. Why can't you guys at Adobe figure this out. We are losing productivity and patience. Your product is not cheap and we expect it to perform!!!!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is NOT FIXED on Mac OS 10.14.2, InDesign 14.01
    It is very jerky with delays all over the place.
    This has happened after upgrading the Mac OS and InDesign.

  • P Devitt commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hey guys, it is not just happening in one document. It is on ALL DOCUMENT for every single little change.
    I go to type something into a box… 8 second spinning wheel.
    Insert a picture… same
    What is up? I have a brand new Touch Bar MacBook Pro circa 2018 and it is a constant aggravation.
    Help!

  • Samson Mwaka commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hey, the beach ball has run for a solid 2 hours. I have tried saving the file as an IDML and later re-opening it as an INDD but all in vain. This is so frustrating, however it intensifies when I made Adobe Cloud online updates. i am using INDD CC 2017. Any help will be appreciated...

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Same problem. Late 2012 Imac. InDesign is now struggling with a basic brochure document when before the InDesign and 10.14 updates, it was fine.

  • Peter commented  ·   ·  Report

    I had a pretty extenisvie catalogue created in Indesign with EasyCatalog which was increcible slow, especially when placing or copy/pasting images.

    This solved the issue for me:
    1. Export the document as an IDML file. (File -> export...)
    2. Open the IDML file and Save as a new INDD-file.
    3. Now the document works smooth again.

  • [Deleted User] commented  ·   ·  Report

    **** was also giving me lots of problems with the spinning wheel/working slowly etc and I found this:

    Why is InDesign behaving erratically (crashing, running slowly)?
    If your InDesign preferences become corrupted, you can see some strange behavior. Luckily, it's easy to replace your InDesign preferences. Hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Windows) or Cmd + Ctrl + Opt + Shift (Mac OS) while restarting InDesign.

    I have done this and it seems to have worked.

  • Patric commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'm running it on an iMac Pro, 64 Gb RAM, top graphic card, and it's still very, very, slow. I gave up and went back to CS6; it has its issues running on modern OS, but at the end, it's still a lot faster.

    Sometimes I wonder what the software is tested on, Nasa's supercomputers?

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'm having slowness when I place a file in Indesign C6. The files are not large. I wait a few minutes for it to place, sometimes up to 5 minutes. It SUCKKKKKS.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have iMac with 32 GB RAM, i7 processor. Recently updated to Adobe CC and after that the working with InDesign became really annoying. When designing magazine layout (I have worked before with InDesign CS6 without problems) the program now occasionally starts to freeze, making further working impossible. Closing and reopening the program doesn't help, only thing so far is the full restart for the computer. After that InDesign may work some time normally, sometimes even couple of hours but then it starts to freeze again.

  • Eric commented  ·   ·  Report

    Same issue. Spinning beachball all the time.

  • Sophs commented  ·   ·  Report

    I had the same problem. Spinning beachball for 15 seconds everytime I zoomed in, moved something or whatever.

    I suspected it was a font issue but I couldn't see what was happening with it.

    In desperation I copied the contents of an A3 layout, made a brand new document and pasted it back. Hey presto all the fonts have the pink box surrounding. I used Type, Find font to replace them and all is back to normal.

    Hope it works for you too.

  • Sophs commented  ·   ·  Report

    I had the same problem. Spinning beachball for 15 seconds everytime I zoomed in, moved something or whatever.

    I suspected it was a font issue but I couldn't see what was happening with it.

    In desparation I copied the contents of an A3 layout, made a brand new document and pasted it back. Hey presto all the fonts have the pink box surrounding. I used Type, Find font to replace them and all is back to normal.

    Hope it works for you too.

  • Erwin commented  ·   ·  Report

    Had the same problem in 13.1. Back to 13.0 solved the problem.
    I am not using Suitcase by the way.

  • Miklós Lányi commented  ·   ·  Report

    Recovery to 13.0 solved the problem, not the suitcase fusion is defective

  • Lynn commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi, I too had the same issue with the little beach ball holding everything up when working in InDesign.

    I tried a few things, but the one thing I think has definitely worked is turning off the Adobe Cloud file syncing. I think it tries to keep up with Every change you make so creates a lag. Anyway worth a try.

    Go to adobe cloud symbol in menu bar. Click on the three dots to the right and click Pause File Syncing. I do think I needed to restart Indesign for it to come into effect for some reason. All the best.

  • Steve commented  ·   ·  Report

    We're having issues as well.. When I select a box containing a graphic, I get the spinning wheel for several seconds, same with when I place a new cursor in a text box, or move between pages. It's not tolerable. We work on Late 2012, 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5, 32 MB memory.

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