InDesign performance issue: Hangs when exporting to PDF
- Latest Indesign CC, Windows 10
- ID would sometimes not finish the export to PDF task and hangs for minutes. It must then be killed in the task manager. During this it constantly consumes a big lot of RAM and CPU power. See attachment.

Fix for this issue is now available in the latest update of InDesign 2020 – that is, InDesign 15.0.1
In the Creative Cloud Desktop application, click on the Updates section on the left. You should be able to see the Update available for InDesign. Please update your InDesign application to this version to try out the fix.
Let us know in the comments section if you face any problem with the updation process.
—
Adobe InDesign Team
29 comments
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jpfeifer commented
Nope. Have the same problem still with the latest inDesign 15.1.3 consistently hangs at 97% when trying to export.
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Susan commented
I am running InDesign 16 & Big Sur and it crashes on saves at least once a day -- getting tedious! Any fixes in my future?
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Minor Mogul commented
Latest update (I write on 2020-10-13) still has this problem.
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Sebastian commented
same here! my indesign (15.1.1. 64bit), which i reinstalled over an over again keeps randomly hanging/crashing. Windows 10 is showing "inactive" in the task manager details and I have to kill the task to restart the app (but no real crash is happening since windows protocol doesnt show any errors). It is a real struggle to work like this. It crashed randomly when exporting to pdf (via shortcut) ...
Running on a lenovo p71 - 32 gigabyte DDR3 ECC RAM - nvidia Quadro P4000 - Intel XEON E3 1505M v6 3.00 GHz 8core processor.
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Rene Hofman commented
Also indd 15.1.1 won't create a pdf, keeps on hanging at 4% in the background tasks for more than 30 minutes yet. Canceling the background task keeps on canceling and won't close. You can't close indd because a background ask is performing. How to solve this?
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eran commented
Same here with InDesign 2020 (updated) on a Mojave machine. stuck on "generating pdf".
This is a real issue, any fixes? -
Anonymous commented
Newest Update didnt fix it. I got crashes by hitting cmd+e for export several times a day. Need to restart indesign to get back to functioning export. Happens often ...
Please do something! -
Gareth Moore commented
I have never had this problem before, but in the latest release I get it all the time - and if you do a series of exports from the same document it gets progressively slower on each export too, even for the same pages.
I've not had exports hanging with previous versions, but InDesign has always been unstable after exporting and would frequently crash in the 5-10 minutes afterwards.
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Ingrid commented
well.. indesign 15.0.2 is still hanging in export at 90%.
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Alexa Viscius commented
PDFs will not export unless I restart computer several times.
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JM commented
Sorry. No. I have InD 2020, 72GB RAM, 8-core i9, and a completely non-corrupt document with no preflight issues and THE PROBLEM IS STILL SO VERY MUCH THERE. PLEASE TELL ME WHY InD NEEDS 100.8 % of an i9 processor to try (AND FAIL) to export a PDF!
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D Ster commented
same here
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Anonymous commented
Hello,
My export has hanged for past 2 days. Because of which I am not able to export other PDF not I am able to shut my PC. Please help me in solving this problem. -
Anssi Kumpula commented
I'm having problems with this as well. Lost one and half days trying to troubleshoot this. Exporting to PDF never finishes (stops at 62 %) and trying to change footnote options crashes InDesign.
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Debora commented
Consistently happening with large file exports using InDesign CC 2019 on Windows 10 Pro. Hangs at 99%, doesn't open PDF but PDF seems to be complete (though I usually force quit and re-export as this fixes the issue rather than trust my document is ok for print). Can't close the background task so InDesign has to be quit using the task manager.
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Jana Rekosh commented
When I package an InDesign file the process freezes as it attempts to make a PDF. I have to force-quit InDesign. The files are collected. Is there any way to turn-off the PDF portion of packaging?
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Anonymous commented
I use CS6 and it freezes more and more often. It always created a corrupt pdf after the failed export.
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Joshua Marner commented
This constantly happens for me. Sometimes it hangs at 5% for a large export (100MB+ PDF export) and doesn't write anything, and other times it hangs at 99% for a normal export (10MB+ PDF export) but the exported file seems to be complete.
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Bob Nathans commented
This has become a significant problem. I've rolled back the installed version of Acrobat and this improves tings somewhat. Adobe needs to deal with this in a proper manner. Clean installation of Creative Cloud, Acrobat & InDesign does not cure the problem for us.
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KB commented
I am also having with CC 2019
it doesnt matter if i export 1 page or the entire document, it succesfully create the pdf, then hangs, indesign is totally unresponsive, no errors.
i have to end task and recover the document each time, thankfully i have lost enough work over the years to have multiple back ups, but not good.