1. INDESIGN 2025 V. 20.3.1.73

2. STEPS TO REPRODUCE THE X_REF BUG WHICH HANGS INDESIGN

   2.1 Show the Cross-References panel (choose Window > Type & Tables > Cross-References)

   2.2 Either a) double click on an exisiting Cross-reference in the Cross Reference Palette to edit it in the (modal) "Edit Cross-Reference" dialogue panel.

   2.3 OR b) Click the Create New Cross-Reference button in the panel.

   2.4 Click on the Reference Format drop down menu .

3. EXPECTED RESULT
   Show the Cross Reference Format drop down menu, allowing user to select of one of the items in the list of current Formatting styles. This new format will then be invoked in the document layout view. (See screen shot with filename "HANG BUG when x-ref style menu is invoked.png").
   Clicking the "Ok" button confirms the choices made in this dialogue and ends the model window session (which prevents other editing of document(s) to take place during the generation of a new/edited X-ref in the text.

4. ACTUAL RESULT
   Frequently these steps results in a hang.

5. ADDITIONAL LEVELS OF DETAIL, TESTING & LOGICAL ANALYSIS

Seem like clicking on the Cross Reference Format Style menu is always trigger for the Hanging, not any of the previous steps, Though this does not mean that clicking on this menu ALWAYS results in a Hang. Changes to the X-Ref format style are sometimes possible (even on a X-ref that previously hung InDesign) and the operation will in this case always succeed when "ok" button is clicked.

In trying to determine the subtle cause of intermittent hanging during these operations, it would sometimes appear that this seems to be related to generating a text for the reference that is longer the the remaining white space on the line where the cross reference is being inserted.

Under normal circumstances, changing a X-ref style is may cause the line of text with the new or previewed edit to X-ref to be overset (the screenshot file called "red dot for overset text.png")

But in many cases the existing style is not causing overset text, but even clicking on the menu (rather than clicking then releasing on a new formatting Style item in the list) results in the hang. And at other times it's only after a different formatting style is selected the hang occurs.

.6. CONCLUSIONS

So its seems to be that the Hang bug trigger is orthogonal to the actual variations in the formatting style settings themselves, and more likely to be the code which executes the menu or the screen redraws for menu changes that is at fault. But given Adobe's woefully buggy code for InDesign and Illustrator, who rightly knows at this point after 15 years of the codebase seeming becoming repeatedly refactored with bad design choices that only make a buggy application worse with each release in terms of application stability with respect to existing Indesign features and functions (many of which have been in the app for over a decade, although possibly enhanced, reworked for the cross-platform JS based UI framework refactored or rewritten entirely).

.7. FURTHER NOTES FOR ADOBE TO READ AND TO PLEASE TAKE SERIOUSLY

I demonstrated this hanging behaviour during a live screen-sharing session with an Adobe support worker using their Adobe's in-house screen sharing application. I asked this person to log this as a bug. The poor technical support employee of Adobe was unable to confirm or deny if this bug is known or new to their developers and obvious no idea if a fix was in the works. He suggested opening the files in Adobe InDesign 2024. I have not attempted this at this point, if there is feature parity with the new cloud based InDesign Review system (which new feature logs seem to indicate is the case) and all the other INDD features I'm using then I'll consider doing so and report back on success or failure of this.

I note that bugs on User Voice forums in relation to previous iterations of InDesign and it's Cross Referencing set of functions seem to litter this forum. So any linkages with these might be worth investigating.

Might I add that i resent wasting hours of time on buggy INDESIGN applications for over a decades now and then getting so frustrated I have to spend an hour or more of my time documenting the bug as precisely as possible in the (vain) hope of the bug being fixed before the current project I'm working on is completed. I've laboured under this bug for a couple of months now for a project I dont work on every day, it's a long multi-document report using the InDesign Book to combine the Indesign files for TOC, X-refs and page numbering functions with a total number of pages which will be in the 100s.