The Ten Things1. Rebuilding preferences| 00:00 | Okay, in my experience, about 80% of
the weirdnesses that could occur with an
| | 00:06 | InDesign document or with InDesign
itself can be solved with a simple
| | 00:10 | rebuilding of the Preferences files.
| | 00:13 | And so this is an essential skill that
all InDesign users should know about.
| | 00:17 | Now, by random kind of glitches,
I mean really strange things like, for
| | 00:22 | example, you might open up a panel
and it's blank or maybe when you try to
| | 00:27 | select text in one place, text in
another place gets selected, or
| | 00:31 | you drag down guidelines and the guidelines
won't appear, and you are positive that
| | 00:35 | you are in Normal mode and
then you have View Guides on.
| | 00:37 | And especially like if it's not every
single document, but it's more than just
| | 00:41 | one document, and it's something
that seems to be growing a bit by bit
| | 00:46 | every day, probably the Preferences
have become corrupted or damaged.
| | 00:50 | And it's so easy to rebuild the preferences
to see if that will fix it. As I said, about
| | 00:54 | 85% of the time in my experience that
it's fixed my problems and the people who
| | 00:58 | email me about their problems.
| | 01:00 | So what are Preferences and what is
the Preference file? Well, it is a file
| | 01:04 | that's stored on your hard drive and
in your user account that tracks how
| | 01:10 | InDesign works by default, meaning for
example what is the measurement unit,
| | 01:15 | what is the workspace selected, and
it's not just the default preferences,
| | 01:19 | but also if you ever went to Preferences
which on a Mac is under the InDesign menu
| | 01:25 | and on a PC is under the Edit menu
and you made some changes, like you said
| | 01:29 | that you want the Ruler Units set to
Inches instead of Picas. So your Custom
| | 01:33 | Preferences as well are
stored in your Preferences file.
| | 01:36 | It's a file that gets written to a lot
and that's why it's kind of prone to
| | 01:40 | get damaged. Like InDesign has a glitch
and it unexpectedly quits or maybe you
| | 01:45 | lose your power and InDesign automatically
quits because of course it has no power.
| | 01:50 | That kind of stuff can
affect the Preference files.
| | 01:54 | Now before I go ahead and rebuild
Preference files, I'm going to show you
| | 01:56 | two simple ways to do that. I want
to warn you that before you do that,
| | 02:00 | check out your presets, because presets
are also stored in the Preference files.
| | 02:05 | Not every single preset, but a preset for
example, like if you created any Print Presets,
| | 02:10 | as there are two here, these
are stored in the Preference file.
| | 02:14 | And when I rebuild the Preference
file these are going to be deleted.
| | 02:17 | So it's kind of a pain to rebuild that.
If you have presets setup for printing
| | 02:22 | or for new documents, stroke
styles and transparency flattener,
| | 02:27 | those are all stored in the InDesign Default
file, the one that's going to be rebuilt
| | 02:32 | when we rebuild the Preferences.
If you want to save those, what you should do
| | 02:35 | is open up those dialog boxes, select
the name of your preset and choose Save.
| | 02:40 | And then just save them to
any place on your Desktop.
| | 02:43 | So this one that I just selected was
Color tabloid with crops, so name it
| | 02:46 | according to how you saved it. So
there is one and then I'll save this one,
| | 02:54 | grayscale proofs for Joe. You might
want to save them into a Print Preset folder
| | 02:59 | because you might not recall
that PRST files are Print Presets.
| | 03:03 | And then after we rebuild the
Preferences you can come back to this dialog box,
| | 03:07 | which will just say Default
and you can choose Load. So again,
| | 03:11 | it's Print Presets, Document Presets,
Transparency Flattener Presets, and any Custom
| | 03:21 | Stroke Styles that you may have created.
| | 03:23 | All right, so if you have any Custom
Strokes Styles here, you want to also save those.
| | 03:28 | So to rebuild Preferences
first of all quit out of InDesign.
| | 03:32 | So I'm going to go ahead and choose InDesign >
Quit InDesign or exit out of it in Windows.
| | 03:37 | Now you can actually delete the file
manually by digging into your hard drive
| | 03:43 | and locating it or you can use an easy
keyboard shortcut. But I do want you to
| | 03:47 | know where the file is stored,
because sometimes you might want to actually
| | 03:51 | grab it and delete it manually.
| | 03:53 | I am going to show you two ways to
rebuild preferences. One is using an easy
| | 03:57 | keyboard shortcut and the other one
is actually going into your hard drive,
| | 04:00 | locating the Preferences
files and deleting them.
| | 04:03 | Once the Preference files are deleted
then InDesign will automatically rebuild them
| | 04:07 | or recreate them from scratch,
the Default set of Preferences.
| | 04:11 | So on a Mac, select your home directory
and then in your home directory there is a
| | 04:16 | folder called Library that
contains a whole lot of settings.
| | 04:20 | There are two folders that contain the
files that we need to delete. First of all,
| | 04:24 | in the Caches folder, there is a
folder for InDesign, here it is Adobe
| | 04:30 | InDesign Version 6.0 is CS4, and then
the name of your language, and it's this
| | 04:35 | file right here, InDesign SavedData.
| | 04:37 | So this file you can just delete or
move to your Desktop if you want, just get
| | 04:42 | rid off that. And then the other file,
if you are doing this manually, is back here.
| | 04:46 | Again, in your Library folder,
scroll down to Preferences.
| | 04:52 | There is Adobe InDesign again. You'll have a
folder for Preferences for every version of
| | 04:58 | InDesign you've installed, so this
is for CS3. Version 6.0 is CS4.
| | 05:03 | Now the name of your language and then inside
here you'll find a whole bunch of cool stuff.
| | 05:08 | But it's the InDesign Defaults file.
All right, so it's the SavedData file,
| | 05:11 | which is in Caches, and the InDesign
Defaults file, which is inside Preferences
| | 05:17 | for InDesign for your version. Got that?
All you need to do is delete both of
| | 05:21 | those files and then restart InDesign.
| | 05:23 | Now if you don't feel like digging
around in your Library folder, and gee I wonder
| | 05:26 | why you wouldn't, you can do it the
easy way with just keyboard shortcuts.
| | 05:30 | So on the Macintosh what you do is
you hold down all four modifier keys.
| | 05:36 | That's the Command+Option+Ctrl+Shift key
while you start the program. On Windows,
| | 05:42 | whether it's XP or Vista, you just need to
hold down Alt+Shift+Ctrl, those three keys.
| | 05:49 | So you hold down those four keys on
the Mac or the three keys on Windows and
| | 05:53 | then you start the program and keep
those keys held down while you start it.
| | 05:56 | You can start it from the Applications
folder or from the dock, from a shortcut
| | 06:01 | on the Desktop, however you would like.
| | 06:03 | And because here on the Mac, holding
down the Ctrl key also is the same as the
| | 06:07 | contextual menu, then like I get
little pop-up menu and I just choose Open.
| | 06:11 | Keep the keys held down until you see
this dialog box appear and then you can
| | 06:15 | release the keys, all right? So it
says, Delete InDesign Preference files?
| | 06:20 | Yes please, and it delete those files and
then it recreates them from scratch and
| | 06:25 | InDesign proceeds to continue reloading.
| | 06:27 | So as you can see it's using the
Default Preferences. Like for example, I would
| | 06:33 | like to have the Application Frame
showing. That's not the default for a
| | 06:37 | Macintosh, so I'll have to turn that
back on and also it got rid off the
| | 06:42 | Recent Items and then as we'll see here,
under File > Print Presets,
| | 06:48 | our Print Presets are gone, and all you need
to do is go to Define, click Load and then
| | 06:53 | load the presets that you had from
before. I'm just going to select one and
| | 06:57 | choose Open, and so on.
| | 07:00 | Now a good idea at this point, after
you've rebuilt your Preferences, is to load
| | 07:05 | back all your presets if you took the
trouble to save them out. To go to your
| | 07:10 | Preferences dialog box and reset any
application preferences that you had set before,
| | 07:17 | for example Units of measurement,
whether you want leading to be
| | 07:21 | applied to the entire paragraph or not.
Those kind of things, your application preferences.
| | 07:26 | Then quit out of the program. That
will save your Custom Preferences and
| | 07:32 | go back to where those preferences are
stored in your Preferences folder here.
| | 07:37 | So Preferences > Adobe InDesign
> Version 6.0, and back this up.
| | 07:42 | Back up the Version 6.0 folder.
| | 07:44 | So all I do is just right-click and
choose Duplicate. That way the next time
| | 07:48 | that you rebuild your preferences or
you think that you need to rebuild the
| | 07:52 | preferences because they might be
corrupt, you don't have to actually get rid
| | 07:55 | off all of your hard work. You can
just replace the file from your backup.
| | 07:59 | So I'll call this backup.
| | 08:02 | So InDesign is going to ignore that
folder, it's going to use this folder.
| | 08:05 | But when I want to rebuild my preferences,
I go to my backup folder, grab my good
| | 08:10 | InDesign Defaults, copy them, go
over to the one that I don't want that's
| | 08:17 | giving me problems and then delete
that and then replace it with the one in
| | 08:21 | my Clipboard or just replace this.
| | 08:23 | Let's start up InDesign again.
Rebuilding your preferences will most likely
| | 08:29 | solve most of the random kind of
glitches that you'll find with InDesign and
| | 08:33 | with your flaky documents. But if not,
go onto another one of the tips in this title.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 2. Deleting a crashing recovery file| 00:00 | Okay, now one of the "scarious" kinds of
problems you'll encounter with InDesign
| | 00:04 | is when you start it up, it immediately
crashes. It won't ever completely load up.
| | 00:09 | It just unexpectedly quits or
becomes unresponsive in Windows. Now, let me
| | 00:14 | show you how to fix that, but before I
show you how to fix it I want to show
| | 00:17 | you how it happened.
| | 00:20 | When you're working in InDesign, as
you know InDesign does not have an Auto
| | 00:23 | Save feature, but it does have a
recovery file. If you look in Preferences,
| | 00:28 | which in InDesign on the Mac it's
right here under the InDesign menu.
| | 00:33 | On Windows go under the Edit menu and go
to Preferences and choose File Handling.
| | 00:38 | You'll see up here under Document
Recovery Data, it tells you the path of where
| | 00:43 | the recovery file is being stored
and you can see that it's in your User Accounts.
| | 00:48 | On the Mac it's in Library >
Caches > Adobe InDesign > InDesign Recovery.
| | 00:54 | So, as you are making changes to an
InDesign document, InDesign is constantly
| | 00:59 | keeping a temp file open in that
folder. If you crash with one or more
| | 01:03 | documents open, the next time that you
start up InDesign it's going to go that
| | 01:07 | recovery file and try to
resurrect those documents.
| | 01:10 | And I'm sure you've seen that before,
when it says a file was detected in your
| | 01:14 | recovery file, shall I attempt to
recreate it? Or sometimes you don't even get
| | 01:17 | that dialog box. You just start up
InDesign and suddenly a document opens on its own.
| | 01:21 | Well, that's what's happening
as the recovery file is being resurrected.
| | 01:25 | So, I'm going to Force Quit out of
InDesign by choosing Force Quit from the
| | 01:31 | Apple and Force Quit so that we can
force these files to be created. Now,
| | 01:38 | if I started InDesign at this point and
it automatically crashed, that's called a
| | 01:43 | crashing recovery file. Luckily,
though it's one of the scariest things to
| | 01:48 | encounter, it's one of the
easiest ones to fix as well.
| | 01:50 | All you do is go to your Home
directory. Here on the Mac it's
| | 01:53 | anne-marieconcepcion, go to Library >
Caches, go to Adobe InDesign and in your version,
| | 02:01 | your Version 6.0 is CS4,
find the folder called InDesign Recovery.
| | 02:07 | Inside the InDesign Recovery folder,
you'll see temp files for the projects
| | 02:11 | that you had open, along with a log
and something called RecoveryData.
| | 02:15 | You can just delete everything in here or
you can delete the entire folder itself.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to select all of these guys
and then just choose Move to Trash.
| | 02:25 | So, what happens is that of course any
unsaved changes in that document that
| | 02:29 | was in the recovery file, those are
lost forever, but at least you should be
| | 02:31 | able to open up InDesign and you'll see
it's automatically creating these files
| | 02:36 | anew here. And InDesign should open
with no problem and then you can go on your merry way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 3. Discovering a document's history| 00:00 | Did you know that every InDesign
document retains a history of itself?
| | 00:05 | I found an old document that has had a long
and colorful history and I put it inside
| | 00:10 | the Exercise Files in Chapter 03.
If you don't have the exercise files,
| | 00:14 | just open up any document
that's been around for a while.
| | 00:17 | So I'm going to go to File > Open and
in the Exercise Files for this third video,
| | 00:22 | select Old catalog.indd and
click Open. Now you are going to get a
| | 00:27 | little alert saying that you are missing
a plug-in, but that's okay. Just click OK.
| | 00:31 | And you'll probably have some
missing fonts. That's perfectly fine as well,
| | 00:34 | because we are really not interested
in the fonts or the graphics or anything
| | 00:37 | like that. It's just a
little three page document.
| | 00:40 | The history of every document is saved
in a secret dialog box and you can get there
| | 00:46 | by holding down the Command key
on the Mac or Ctrl key on the Windows and
| | 00:51 | on the Mac select About InDesign,
which you'll find under the InDesign menu.
| | 00:55 | On the PC you'll find it
under the Help menu.
| | 00:58 | So keep that Command or Ctrl key
held down and you'll discover the Adobe
| | 01:03 | InDesign Component Information
dialog box, which has a ton of very useful
| | 01:07 | information. For example, it will say
the current version of InDesign that
| | 01:10 | you are using along with its patch number
that you see is 6.0.1.532, which if you
| | 01:17 | call in for tech support, sometimes
they'll ask you what are these three
| | 01:21 | numbers over here. Or you can tell
people when they say "which version do you have?"
| | 01:24 | say 601.532. They'll be very impressed.
| | 01:28 | Along with the required plug-ins,
this is just the list of all of the InDesign
| | 01:31 | plug-ins that are required to run this
version of InDesign, down here you will
| | 01:36 | see the Document Info. So this
document is using these 57 plug-ins, plus here
| | 01:41 | are three plug-ins that it was created
with that you currently don't have installed.
| | 01:45 | You will see this Paper Module
one was the only one that threw up an alert.
| | 01:49 | So you very often don't need a plug-in
to open a document that was used to create it.
| | 01:54 | But the most important stuff is right
here under Document History. In Document History,
| | 01:59 | you can see what happen to
this document since it was first created
| | 02:03 | and that can often help you
troubleshoot or at least point you in a direction
| | 02:07 | of where the troubleshoot.
| | 02:09 | For example, you can see that this
document, under Recovered MiniSave,
| | 02:13 | it says Yes, which means at some point in
its history InDesign crashed while this
| | 02:17 | document was open with unsaved
changes. And then when InDesign was opened
| | 02:21 | again, the MiniSave, the recovery file,
opened it up and the user saved changes.
| | 02:26 | Now sometimes a document that crashes,
even if it is saved after the recovery
| | 02:31 | file is open, can be somewhat damaged.
So this can give you a clue like, well,
| | 02:35 | maybe there is something inside of
document that's damaged, because it was open
| | 02:39 | when InDesign crashed.
| | 02:40 | You can also see if it was ever
converted from QuarkXPress or PageMaker and
| | 02:45 | that's a good way to tell if maybe you
should spend some time in recreating
| | 02:49 | the document from fresh in InDesign because
you can carry over some corruption from
| | 02:53 | Quark or PageMaker.
| | 02:55 | And then as I scroll through, you can
see if it was ever opened from an InDesign
| | 02:58 | Interchange. Let me scroll back up
to show that you again. Here we go,
| | 03:02 | Opened from InDesign Interchange. That
means somebody exported it to INX and then
| | 03:06 | it was opened again over here.
If it was ever part of a book.
| | 03:10 | And I love the next part, which says
when it was born. Here is its birth date.
| | 03:14 | It was opened as a copy in Windows 501
in Version 301 build 838. That is this
| | 03:22 | patch number, the build number.
At 12:29 p.m. on December 7, 2005.
| | 03:27 | I think almost three-and-a-half years ago and
then how many times it was opened as a copy or
| | 03:32 | saved as in every version on every
platform. All right, so not just saved, but
| | 03:37 | saved as or open as a copy, it will
tell you. This one was opened as a copy or
| | 03:41 | saved as in many different
versions since time began.
| | 03:45 | Sometimes, if a document has been saved
as too many times, the chances are very good
| | 03:50 | that there are some kind of
older corruptions that are still somewhat
| | 03:53 | present in the document's internal
structure and it may be a good idea to go
| | 03:57 | through some document recreation
routines such as the one that I'll be
| | 04:01 | explaining in this title to
recreate the document from scratch.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 4. Round-tripping to INX and IDML| 00:00 | Here is another really great
troubleshooting technique for InDesign files and
| | 00:04 | it's especially good when you have
narrowed down the problem to one bad boy,
| | 00:09 | one problem child file. Your other files
are working fine in InDesign but there
| | 00:14 | is something glitchy with one particular file.
| | 00:17 | Now for example, let's take a look at
this file and I have found a glitchy file
| | 00:21 | for you to play with. It's inside your
Exercise Files for the fourth chapter.
| | 00:26 | It's called FlyingMachine. Now here is
the glitch. If you open up the Swatches panel,
| | 00:30 | you will see it just uses black
and two Pantone colors but notice the
| | 00:35 | problem is that one is coated, one
is uncoated. They are the same thing.
| | 00:38 | So normally you would want to get rid
of one of these. So I'm going to the
| | 00:43 | Swatches panel menu, choosing Select All
Unused and yes, 282 U is not used,
| | 00:49 | so I want to delete it but it won't let me
delete it. Now why won't it let me delete it?
| | 00:54 | I mean that color is not used
anywhere in this document and you can verify
| | 00:59 | that by looking in the Separations
panel or you can just select like obviously
| | 01:04 | this has been colored blue,
but it's color with the coated pantone.
| | 01:09 | You think maybe it's used in the
Paragraph or Character Style. No it's not.
| | 01:13 | There is nothing other than the
Basic Paragraph Styles. What about this
| | 01:17 | doohickey? Well that's from the Master
Pages and this blue is the coated one.
| | 01:24 | So 282 U really isn't used anywhere. Why won't
it let you delete it? Well there is a glitch here.
| | 01:31 | So the fix for this particular glitch
is called Round Tripping. You export it
| | 01:36 | to like a generic format and then
reopen it right back up in the same version
| | 01:41 | of InDesign. In CS4 you have two
choices. You can export it to InDesign
| | 01:46 | Interchange, INX, or to IDML, which is
the new file format available for CS4 only.
| | 01:53 | Let's try INX first.
| | 01:56 | So I'll go to File > Export and then
under Format, you want to choose InDesign
| | 02:02 | CS3 Interchange. Now it's called CS3
because it's officially for sharing CS4
| | 02:08 | files with people have CS3. You have
to give them an INX file from your CS4
| | 02:13 | layout and then they could open up
their INX file in InDesign CS3 and it would
| | 02:17 | resurrect itself just like this, but
a troubleshooting technique that's been
| | 02:21 | around for while is to export INX and
then reopen it right back in the same program.
| | 02:25 | So I'm going to switch to my
Desktop and say FlyingMachine.inx out here,
| | 02:30 | save it and then
we'll just go ahead and open it.
| | 02:34 | Now remember exporting is just
exporting a copy. So you're never messing around
| | 02:38 | with the original document. You
don't have to worry about harming it.
| | 02:42 | So let me go to File > Open, go back to the
Desktop, locate the INX file and choose Open.
| | 02:49 | It opens up as an untitled document
and all the links are intact and all the
| | 02:53 | colors are intact and let's take a
look at Swatches. Well the color is still there.
| | 02:57 | That's not a surprise but
let's see if we can delete it now.
| | 03:00 | So I'm going to choose Select All Unused.
Oh, but this color still won't delete. Hmmm.
| | 03:05 | Well, actually that's okay because
I intentionally set up this file to be a
| | 03:09 | little troublesome, so that I can show
you a couple other things to try at this point.
| | 03:13 | But keep in mind that the
round tripping to INX and then back into
| | 03:18 | InDesign usually does solve the whole host
of problems, just that simple act itself.
| | 03:23 | But another thing that you could try
would be to go to the original file and
| | 03:27 | this time export it to IDML format
instead of InDesign Interchange Format.
| | 03:31 | IDML format is a new format for CS4 and
you can export to IDML and then reopen that
| | 03:37 | IDML directly back in InDesign CS4 and that
will also sometime solve random file glitches.
| | 03:43 | If you want to learn more about the
IDML format, because there are cool things
| | 03:47 | you can do to that IDML file outside of
InDesign, please make sure and watch my
| | 03:51 | InDesign CS4 New Features title, where I have
an entire video devoted just to the IDML format.
| | 03:57 | All right, so we are back here with
this INX file where the color still won't delete.
| | 04:03 | There is one more thing that
we can try. Now if you are brave,
| | 04:07 | all right, what you can do is to actually
open up that INX file in a text editor.
| | 04:13 | You've exported that INX file, remember?
| | 04:15 | Now I'm switching here to TextEdit,
which is the really great default text
| | 04:19 | editor that comes with Mac OS X, and
there are other great text editors that
| | 04:23 | come with Windows as well or you can
use TextWrangler, BBEdit or something like that.
| | 04:27 | But all you do is choose File >
Open in your text editor and select
| | 04:31 | the name of that INX file.
| | 04:33 | Now I know this trick works with
colors that won't delete and sometimes with
| | 04:37 | other glitches as well. But I'm not
saying it will solve every problem.
| | 04:41 | In this case, what we are looking for is any
instance of 282 U, right. So I'm going to
| | 04:47 | go to TextEdit. I'm going to go to
Find and search for 282 U and it found an
| | 04:57 | instance of the color. And then you
select the entire paragraph of code.
| | 05:01 | I just triple clicked, which selects the
paragraph or line of code in this INX file.
| | 05:06 | So you see Pantone 282 U and then you delete it.
| | 05:11 | Now when there are color calls inside
an InDesign file, they usually occur twice.
| | 05:14 | So I'm going to choose
Find Next and there is the next one.
| | 05:19 | Triple-click, Delete. Just in case,
I'll see there is anymore. Find Next and
| | 05:26 | there is no more. So then I'm
just going to save this again as
| | 05:30 | FlyingMachine.inx, save my changes and see
what happens when I open that in InDesign.
| | 05:36 | I wish we had a little Drum Roll effect
here but let's see what happens. Ta-da!
| | 05:44 | The color is gone, right. Everything else still
works fine but the color has been cleared out.
| | 05:49 | So just the simple exporting of a file
to INX and opening up again I would say
| | 05:55 | at least 50-70% of the time it's going
to fix glitchy problems. If not, you can
| | 06:00 | always try actually
editing that INX file yourself.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 5. Moving pages to a fresh file| 00:00 | Now I want to show you a low-key, easy
kind of way of troubleshooting a flakey document
| | 00:05 | by simply seeing if perhaps
the problem is in the document itself and
| | 00:11 | moving all of the objects to a fresh
new InDesign document will solve it.
| | 00:15 | If that's something that you suspect might be
the case, then it's pretty easy to do in InDesign.
| | 00:20 | In this example, I'm working with
a small catalog that's in landscape
| | 00:24 | orientation and the first step is to
create your fresh new InDesign document.
| | 00:29 | So in order to match the page size in
orientation, I'm going to go to File and
| | 00:36 | choose Document Setup and see how
this current document is setup. So this is
| | 00:41 | just letter sized, landscape, Facing Pages.
Now I'll remember that and that's what
| | 00:45 | I'll create in the new document.
| | 00:47 | Now truth be told, this is not a
requirement. I could create a new document
| | 00:51 | that was postcard size, and these
pages would still move over successfully.
| | 00:55 | It's just that the artwork would be
centered over the postcard size pages.
| | 00:59 | That's not going to help me out a lot.
So I'm going to just click OK here and
| | 01:02 | then create a new document from File
> New, that is letter, facing page,
| | 01:08 | landscape. The number of columns and
margins and bleed guides and stuff,
| | 01:12 | that makes no difference because we are
going to be bringing over the masters as well.
| | 01:16 | So I have created an untitled
document and the Chocolate catalog.
| | 01:20 | Now we need to drag pages from the source
document, the problem child document, from
| | 01:27 | its Pages panel and drop them on to
the window of the receiving document.
| | 01:33 | Now unfortunately, InDesign, unlike
say Photoshop, won't let me just drag a page
| | 01:38 | and drop it onto the tab to have
it pop open in front. Maybe we'll get
| | 01:42 | that in CS5, but we do have to have
part of this showing. So I can either
| | 01:47 | detach these from the tab so they
both are floating windows, or what I think
| | 01:51 | I'll do is I'll just use N-up view to
put these two documents side by side.
| | 01:56 | So let's say that I want to bring over
all pages from this document and drop
| | 02:01 | them over on to this document.
With this document active, what you do is
| | 02:06 | you select the first page and then
Shift-click the last page and then from the
| | 02:11 | Pages panel, drag and drop the pages
over on to this document. Now before I do that,
| | 02:17 | I want you to check out the
masters. When you drag and drop a page,
| | 02:20 | it brings along its master for the ride
and it adds it to the Master panel of the
| | 02:25 | receiving document. However, if the
name is exactly the same, like here it's
| | 02:30 | A-Master and here it's A-Master,
then the definition for the receiving
| | 02:35 | document's A-Master trumps, and so
these guys will lose that filled in master
| | 02:41 | and they will become blank A-Masters.
In other words, please rename your
| | 02:46 | masters before you do this dragging
and dropping. So I'm just going to
| | 02:49 | right-click on A-Master. You just need
to rename them if you have left them at
| | 02:54 | the default names. And I'll just call it
Master-org and I'll do the same thing
| | 02:59 | for B-Master. I'm just right-
clicking on the name of the master,
| | 03:02 | choosing Master Options and
changing part of the name. That's good.
| | 03:07 | All right, now let's try that again.
Select the first page, Shift+Click the
| | 03:10 | last page, drag and drop anywhere on to
the window for the receiving document.
| | 03:15 | You will get an alert that says,
"Where do you want to put these?"
| | 03:18 | Do not choose After Page 1, especially
if you are doing a facing pages document,
| | 03:22 | because that means what was page one
here will be page two here and it's
| | 03:26 | going to mess up your left and right
spreads. So instead, choose At Start of
| | 03:30 | Document or Before Page 1. In other
words, you want to make sure that page one
| | 03:35 | is going to end up at page one. So I'll
choose At Start of Document and click OK.
| | 03:41 | And now all the pages are brought over.
Let me choose Consolidate All so we can
| | 03:46 | see it and now we have a completely
fresh new InDesign document with all of
| | 03:50 | our elements brought over.
| | 03:51 | So the other way of bringing pages over,
I'm going to do undo, is it doesn't
| | 03:56 | require that you arrange the window so
that you can see them both at the same time.
| | 03:59 | Instead, in the original document
you select the pages that you want to
| | 04:04 | move over and then from the Pages panel
menu, or you can also do this from the
| | 04:09 | Layout Pages flyout menu,
you choose Move Pages.
| | 04:13 | So no dragging and dropping involved.
And move pages one through seven,
| | 04:19 | or I guess I could have just chosen Move
Pages and entered the pages that I want.
| | 04:23 | And then where do you wan to them to go?
We want them to go at the start of the document.
| | 04:27 | Of which document? Why, of
Untitled-4. So you do have to have the
| | 04:31 | document open before you choose Move
pages. And then click OK and then when
| | 04:37 | we go to page four, you see
the pages have been brought over.
| | 04:41 | Now moving pages, you don't have to
worry so much about the naming of the
| | 04:45 | masters, because when you move pages
and you bring the masters over, InDesign
| | 04:49 | is little more intelligent about it,
and if the two masters have the same exact name,
| | 04:53 | InDesign will rename the one
that you are bringing over. It will
| | 04:57 | increment up the prefix of the
master page. On the other hand, it will
| | 05:02 | increment up the prefix of the master
page, but it won't associate the pages
| | 05:06 | with that newly named master. So
though it is a little smarter with master pages,
| | 05:11 | it probably is still a good idea to
make sure that you have the master pages
| | 05:15 | are differently named in both the
source document and the receiving document.
| | 05:19 | So this technique, I found it very
useful especially when you have a really old
| | 05:23 | document that you saved lots of times,
such as the example that I showed and
| | 05:28 | talked about in the video about a
document history. To create a completely new
| | 05:33 | InDesign document from scratch and
bring your objects over will sometime solve
| | 05:37 | the problem. Now you don't have to
bring over every single page. Sometimes
| | 05:40 | if you are pretty sure if it's just one
page that's causing a problem, you can
| | 05:44 | move just that one page over to the
new document and if you can't replicate
| | 05:49 | the problem there, then you know that
is the problem page and you can either
| | 05:52 | recreate it from scratch or
start again in a new document.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 6. Finding corrupt images| 00:00 | One of the most frustrating problems
I think to have going on with an InDesign
| | 00:05 | document is when you suspect that an
image is corrupt or an image is at fault
| | 00:10 | for the document misbehaving. Because
there's really no obvious way to tell
| | 00:16 | which image is the problem. But I'll
show you what I have learned as far as
| | 00:20 | having to troubleshoot a document and
get it down to the one particular image
| | 00:24 | or class of images, because this
definitely has happened to me and to a lot of
| | 00:27 | my clients in the past. I think that
probably you might want to start out by
| | 00:32 | assuming it's an image problem if the
problem occurs when you are trying to get
| | 00:37 | some output. When you are printing or
exporting to PDF, if it seems to go along
| | 00:43 | fine and then suddenly halfway through
the document it will unexpectedly quit,
| | 00:47 | then probably it's that the document
has gotten up to page 4 or 5, encountered
| | 00:52 | an issue with one of the original
images and just can't go on. So it pays to
| | 00:57 | pay attention to the Print dialog box
or the Export to PDF dialog box, because
| | 01:03 | you can see the progress of which
pages are being sent and get an idea of if
| | 01:07 | the problem occurs after page 20 or
before page 20, for example. A way to
| | 01:12 | confirm that it's definitely an image
problem is obviously to remove all the
| | 01:16 | images, or at least remove them
from the output stream. Now if you are
| | 01:20 | printing, this is how you do that. You
go up to the File menu and choose Print.
| | 01:27 | Choose the name of your printer and
then in the Graphics pane, instead of send
| | 01:32 | all the image data, have it send none
of the image data. When you say send no
| | 01:38 | image data, that means that instead of
sending this image, for example where my
| | 01:43 | mouse is, it would send just the frame
with a large X in it, indicating that
| | 01:47 | there normally is an image here. It
does send any type that you created in
| | 01:51 | InDesign and it does send any like
colored background, simple shapes or frames
| | 01:56 | that you fill in with color, but it
does not send any linked images. Now if
| | 02:01 | that prints correctly, then it's
probably a corrupt image that is causing your
| | 02:06 | crashing or your inability to print
the actual document. If you are exporting
| | 02:10 | to PDF, if I choose Adobe PDF Presets,
I'll just choose High Quality Print and
| | 02:16 | save the PDF on the Desktop. You don't
have the Graphics pane where you can say
| | 02:22 | just print no images or just a proxy
image. Instead, you are going to have to
| | 02:26 | rely on these commands down here,
such as under Export Layers, Visible &
| | 02:32 | Printable Layers, or Include Non-
Printing Objects, which is turned off by
| | 02:36 | default. So you can set that up for
your images, layers and non-printing
| | 02:40 | objects. Let me show you. In this
spread for example, if we have all of our
| | 02:45 | images on their own layer, as we do
here, we could just hide the images layer
| | 02:50 | and then when we go to Export, by
default it will not export hidden layers. So
| | 02:55 | we could make a PDF without any images
and if the PDF does successfully export,
| | 03:00 | then we know probably there is a
corrupt image at some place. The other thing
| | 03:05 | you can do would be to select an image.
This is especially useful if you know
| | 03:09 | of a problem image, or if you suspect a
certain image to be causing a problem.
| | 03:13 | Select it, go to the Window menu and
open up the Attributes panel and turn on
| | 03:18 | Nonprinting. Now notice that if I
switch to Preview mode, the image disappears.
| | 03:24 | So this is a quick way to tell which
images are going to print and which ones
| | 03:28 | won't, and if this spread now prints
successfully, but with this image showing
| | 03:34 | it does not print successfully, then
there is something wrong with the image.
| | 03:37 | In that case, if you do narrow it down
to a certain image, then you can request
| | 03:42 | a new copy from the clients or you can,
in the worst case, you will have to
| | 03:46 | rescan it or re-photograph the image.
But obviously there is something corrupt
| | 03:49 | with this image itself. Sometimes you
can't narrow it down to a specific image
| | 03:54 | and in that case, the way that I worked
with these kinds of files is to use an
| | 03:58 | old tried and true method of
troubleshooting computers, which is called the
| | 04:02 | binary method. In other words, of this
seven page document, I print pages 1-3,
| | 04:07 | and if pages 1-3 printed fine, then
I would know the problem is somewhere
| | 04:11 | between pages 4 and 7. So then I try
printing 4 and 7, and if printing pages
| | 04:16 | 4-7 crash, InDesign or refuse to print,
then I can confirm it's somewhere in
| | 04:21 | here. And then I would split these
four pages up into two. So then I'll try
| | 04:26 | printing pages 4 and 5. If that prints
fine, then I know the problem is here
| | 04:30 | under 6 and 7. If it doesn't print
pages 4 and 5, then I would confirm by
| | 04:35 | printing 6 and 7. If they are printed
fine, then I know the problem is on pages
| | 04:39 | 4 and 5. Now with a very small
document that's obviously not a big deal, but
| | 04:43 | with a long document this helps
tremendously. So if you have a 90 page document
| | 04:48 | that is just refusing to print, you
can try printing pages 1-40. And if that
| | 04:53 | prints fine and then you print pages
41-90 and that crashes, well, then you
| | 04:57 | know it's one of the images on pages 41
through 90. Using the binary method of
| | 05:02 | printing is a method that is a little
bit tedious, but it is sure to help you
| | 05:06 | locate the exact image
that's causing the problem.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 7. Testing for corrupt fonts| 00:00 | So, testing for corrupt or damaged or
bad or duplicate fonts. Now, that is
| | 00:06 | definitely an extremely difficult task
in InDesign and I think that an entire
| | 00:11 | video title could be devoted to
diagnosing font problems. But they definitely
| | 00:17 | are a contributing cause to some
kinds of problems with InDesign files and
| | 00:22 | I'll tell you what I know and how
I usually diagnose font problems.
| | 00:26 | First of all, if the problem is having
to do when you are outputting type,
| | 00:31 | such as when you are printing or when you
are exporting to PDF, and you know it's
| | 00:35 | not an image, like perhaps your
document has no images, then it is very likely
| | 00:42 | a font problem. Now let me tell you some
places to get information about your typefaces used.
| | 00:47 | I am sure that you know already that
when you open up an InDesign document,
| | 00:51 | if you go to the Type menu and choose
Find Fonts, it lists all of the typefaces
| | 00:56 | used in your document. But what you
might not know is that when you click More Info
| | 01:00 | and then select one of the fonts
used, you get a lot more information.
| | 01:04 | And this can help, for example, if you
think that you may be suffering from having
| | 01:09 | duplicate fonts installed, like both
the OpenType and the type one version of
| | 01:13 | the same fonts installed. And when that
happens then InDesign will show partial
| | 01:17 | families being available for each font rather
than the full family. It gets kind of confusing.
| | 01:22 | And you are really not supposed to have
duplicate families installed and active
| | 01:26 | at the same time. So you can tell
whether it being pulled from by selecting the
| | 01:31 | font name up here and then looking
under More Info and looking at the path.
| | 01:35 | So you can see that this is being pulled
from the System/Library/Fonts/ACaslon Pro.
| | 01:41 | And if I choose Myriad Pro, the
same thing is true. It's being pulled from
| | 01:45 | the system library.
| | 01:47 | If it was being pulled from a
normal user account, from the Anne-Marie
| | 01:50 | Concepcion User Home account, then
you would see a little tilde in front of here.
| | 01:54 | Or if it was being pulled from
any generic folder, because I was using a
| | 01:58 | font management program like Suitcase
or FontExplorer, then you would just see
| | 02:03 | the path to that folder. And knowing
where is the font stored will help
| | 02:08 | you to track it down in Windows
Explorer or the Finder in order to replace it
| | 02:13 | with a different version or to remove it.
| | 02:15 | You can also see how many characters
use that typeface and in how many styles
| | 02:20 | it's used. Now one way to diagnose to
see if the problem with the document has
| | 02:25 | to do with the fonts is to basically
strip out all the fonts in a copy of the
| | 02:29 | document. So you do a Save As of the
document, like this Choco catalog, and
| | 02:35 | then I'm just going to go ahead and close the
Info panel because I don't need that anymore.
| | 02:39 | Take every single font and replace
it with something else and make sure
| | 02:42 | you turn on Redefine Style when changing all,
because that way it will also take it out
| | 02:47 | of any Paragraph Styles or
Character Styles that call for that typeface,
| | 02:51 | which can also affect how a
document interacts with typefaces.
| | 02:55 | So I would just say Change All and
when it has changed a font called in a style,
| | 03:01 | you will get this little dialog box.
You can turn on Don't show again if you like.
| | 03:05 | If the font wasn't called for in
any style then you won't get that alert.
| | 03:09 | So just go through every single
one and choose Change All. Of course
| | 03:12 | you are doing this to a copy, right?
And then click Done and then try printing it
| | 03:20 | and exporting it to PDF.
| | 03:21 | Now if you are not having any problems,
then you know the problem was one of
| | 03:24 | those original fonts that you had
installed. And in that case, you can use the
| | 03:28 | same binary system that I described
in my diagnosing corrupt images or bad
| | 03:33 | images lesson, which is to get rid of
half of the fonts and then test and then
| | 03:38 | get rid of the half of the second
half of the fonts and test, and so on.
| | 03:42 | If you are using a third party font
management utility, probably what I would do
| | 03:49 | even before going to the drastic
step of getting rid of every font and then
| | 03:53 | copying the document to test, would be
to simply quit out of InDesign and go to
| | 04:00 | the Finder or Windows Explorer. And in
the Application folder get rid of the
| | 04:06 | third party plug-in that controls auto
activation. Just select the name of the
| | 04:12 | InDesign application folder and then
in there, select the Plug-ins folder and
| | 04:18 | you should see a folder called
Suitcase Fusion or FontExplorer or whatever
| | 04:22 | kind of third party program you
have that does auto activation.
| | 04:25 | I have heard and I have seen it
for myself that just turning-off Auto
| | 04:29 | Activation in the Programs Utility
menu does not do enough. You actually have
| | 04:34 | to remove it from the Plug-ins folder
and put it on your desktop or elsewhere
| | 04:39 | on your hard drive and then restart
InDesign. And you would also want to go to
| | 04:43 | the manufacturer's website to see if
you have the latest version of that auto
| | 04:47 | activation plug-in, because sometimes
those go through incremental patch fixes.
| | 04:52 | So make sure that you are completely
up-to-date with any auto activation
| | 04:54 | plug-ins or any font management plug-ins.
| | 04:57 | Speaking of font management plug-ins,
you should know that if you are having
| | 05:02 | repeated problems with duplicate
fonts or corrupt fonts, there are a few
| | 05:06 | software programs that can help you.
For example, a font management program
| | 05:11 | like Suitcase is available for both
Windows and under the name Fusion 2 for the
| | 05:16 | Macintosh. Both of these are created
by the company called Extensis.
| | 05:19 | They are very well known. They are not required.
You know, if you have a lot of fonts that you use
| | 05:24 | in your design work you don't need a
font management program. Both Windows and
| | 05:28 | the Macintosh have built-in font management.
| | 05:30 | Now just because you have a lot of
fonts that you are using in your design projects,
| | 05:34 | doesn't mean that you have to have
a third party font management program.
| | 05:38 | But having one does come with
a lot of benefits and one of them is
| | 05:42 | having that Auto Activation, which
means that every time that you open up an
| | 05:45 | InDesign document, if you don't have
the fonts that it requires activated,
| | 05:50 | then the font management program will
silently and in the background activate them
| | 05:54 | for you. So you never get the dialog
box that says you have a missing font.
| | 05:59 | But in my experience if there is an issue
with fonts in an InDesign document,
| | 06:04 | the very first thing I would probably look
at would be the auto activation plug-in.
| | 06:08 | See if removing that or
updating it fixes the problem.
| | 06:11 | Now if you think the problem is
corrupt fonts or for example you ran through
| | 06:15 | that routine of replacing every font
with one default system font and that
| | 06:19 | fixed the problem, then you might want
to get a font utility that can search for
| | 06:25 | and fix corrupt fonts and font
caches. If you purchased one of these
| | 06:30 | products from Extensis, the product
called FontDoctor comes with it.
| | 06:33 | But you don't have to own an Extensis
product to get FontDoctor. It is available
| | 06:38 | separately as you can see and it runs
in both Macintosh and Windows. It is,
| | 06:44 | as they call it, the ultimate repair tool.
| | 06:45 | Now there are other font repair
utilities. Some are free, some come from third
| | 06:51 | party companies like this one, from
Insider Software called Smasher,
| | 06:55 | but this one is only available for Mac OS X.
These are all worthy of investigation if
| | 06:59 | you think that you are
suffering from font problems.
| | 07:02 | Sometimes you can solve font problems,
corrupt fonts and things like that, on your own.
| | 07:07 | I went to Adobe's website
and just looked up 'fonts troubleshooting'
| | 07:12 | and you can see it came up with a few
good hits for troubleshooting font issues
| | 07:17 | on Mac OS X and then further down there is
one for troubleshooting font issues in Windows.
| | 07:22 | But if you post a question about that
you are having troubles with fonts and
| | 07:26 | corrupt fonts and duplicate fonts on
one of the InDesign forums or mailing lists,
| | 07:31 | very often people will refer you
to this section of the Adobe Knowledge
| | 07:36 | Base article on troubleshooting fonts,
which is to search through your system
| | 07:40 | for this file called AdobeFnt.lst and
then delete all of them that are found.
| | 07:47 | You will see that sometimes
they end with different numbers.
| | 07:50 | Then you restart the computer and
restart InDesign and what that does is force
| | 07:55 | InDesign to create a new font database.
Sometimes that fix does the trick.
| | 08:00 | So if you can't memorize how to do it,
just go to the Adobe website and look for
| | 08:04 | 'troubleshooting fonts' and you will come with
the knowledge base article that lists this out.
| | 08:08 | Finally, if you are on a Macintosh,
where fonts are-- though they are easier
| | 08:12 | to deal with, they can be more complicated
than on Windows because there are just
| | 08:15 | so many places where you can store
fonts in the Mac. I highly recommend one of
| | 08:19 | the Take Control books about working
with fonts in the Leopard operating system.
| | 08:23 | They have Take Control of Fonts,
then they have Take Control of Font Problems.
| | 08:26 | Two separate E-books that you
can purchase for a very low cost,
| | 08:31 | and you can get 20% off if you buy them both.
| | 08:34 | All right, I don't work for Take
Control, but it's a great company and
| | 08:37 | this book is huge and covers it from soup
to nuts, so it's a good resource to have.
| | 08:42 | Anyway, out of all the problems
that you may suffer with an InDesign document,
| | 08:46 | because just about every
InDesign document uses typefaces, it is one
| | 08:51 | of the first places to look to see if
there is an issue and unfortunately it's
| | 08:54 | one of the knottiest to solve. So
a good idea is to practice safe fonting
| | 09:00 | from the get-go. And for that, you need
to have either a font management utility
| | 09:04 | or a lot of knowledge about how
fonts are stored on your computer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 8. Disabling third-party plug-ins| 00:00 | One easy troubleshooting fix is to
disable any third party plug-ins that might
| | 00:04 | be running in InDesign. Now the
reason I didn't mention it as one of the
| | 00:07 | earlier movies is because in my
experience the plug-ins, unless it's a
| | 00:11 | Font Activation plug-in, usually doesn't
have that much effect on if InDesign is
| | 00:16 | acting flaky or not. They are pretty stable.
| | 00:19 | However, if in doubt you might as
well try and disable them. Well, a lot of
| | 00:23 | people don't even know if they have any
plug-ins running and a good way to tell
| | 00:26 | is to go up to the InDesign menu and
you will see sometimes a plug-in will put
| | 00:31 | information about itself here, like
About MultiDo, which is in InDesign plug-in,
| | 00:35 | or if you go to the About Plug-in
flyout menu, some third partys will
| | 00:41 | add a little About box for themselves.
| | 00:44 | You can also go to Configure Plug-Ins
under the InDesign menu, and by the way
| | 00:49 | all of these are under the Help menu
in Windows, where InDesign lists all of
| | 00:55 | the plug-ins in the program, and you
can see that a lot of these, like Library
| | 00:58 | panel and basic tools, are actually
directly from the InDesign Application folder,
| | 01:03 | because that's all that InDesign
is actually. It's a big collection of
| | 01:06 | plug-ins that Adobe developed themselves.
But at the bottom under the Display title,
| | 01:12 | turn off Adobe, so uncheck the
Adobe checkbox, and then what's left are
| | 01:16 | your third party plug-ins.
| | 01:18 | The ones with the stop signs means that
there is a problem with them and then
| | 01:22 | the regular plug-ins just show that
they are running, all right. You can get
| | 01:25 | information about them, you can also
duplicate them, you can import more
| | 01:29 | plug-ins. I would not bother
creating a set with having these disabled or
| | 01:34 | anything like that. I would just use
this dialog box as a way to see what other
| | 01:38 | plug-ins you have installed. You might
want to write these down and then quit
| | 01:42 | out of InDesign. So I'll choose
InDesign > Quit or Exit from the File menu in
| | 01:47 | Windows, and in your InDesign
Program Folder, which on a Mac is in the
| | 01:52 | Applications Folder, and on Windows
in your Start menu, go to All Programs,
| | 01:57 | locate Adobe InDesign CS4, you will
see a folder called Plug-ins that have a
| | 02:03 | series of other folders that have
other plug-ins in them. These are the ones
| | 02:07 | that Adobe created.
| | 02:08 | You might see a plug-in just sort of
floating along here with all the other
| | 02:13 | folders. This is usually a third
party plug-in, so here is the InVersion
| | 02:16 | Plug-in that we saw from pre-media
system, here is the MultiDo Plug-in, and
| | 02:21 | then there is also a folder that
doesn't belong here. That's not from Adobe,
| | 02:26 | this is the DTP Tools Plug-in folder,
and these were the two that have that
| | 02:29 | stop sign. The reason is because these
are from an older version of InDesign.
| | 02:34 | Now what I recommend is that when you
install plug-ins or when your IT person
| | 02:38 | installs plug-ins, please have them add
a label or something to this folder.
| | 02:43 | If you are on a Macintosh, you can just
select the folder and then go to the File
| | 02:47 | menu and choose a label, so that it's
very easy to tell which of these plug-ins
| | 02:52 | came from a third party, and which ones
are part of the default set that comes
| | 02:57 | from Adobe. That way you can quickly
go to your plug-Ins Folder and see your
| | 03:02 | third party plug-ins at a glance.
| | 03:04 | Now to uninstall plug-ins, it's a
simple matter of just dragging them right out
| | 03:08 | of this folder and putting them
wherever you would like. You know what I do is
| | 03:11 | inside my InDesign CS4 folder,
I just create a new folder and call it
| | 03:15 | Plug-Outs, right, then that's
where I put the plug-ins that I want to
| | 03:21 | deactivate temporarily. Just drag and
drop them right into Plug-Outs and then
| | 03:25 | start InDesign again.
| | 03:26 | And now when I go to configure plug-
ins and I turn off Adobe, then it's all empty.
| | 03:34 | So now I can test to see if
the problem that I'm having with my
| | 03:39 | documents with the program itself
still exists, and if not then I know the
| | 03:43 | issue has to do with one of those plug-ins
and I can test those, or I can make
| | 03:47 | sure that I have the latest versions, and so on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 9. Testing in a new user account| 00:00 | Now, sometimes problems that are
occurring with your InDesign files or problems
| | 00:04 | that are occurring with InDesign itself,
they have nothing to do with the files
| | 00:07 | or with the installed application of
InDesign but have something to do with the
| | 00:12 | conflict in your user accounts.
| | 00:15 | Now as you probably know both Windows
and the Macintosh are multiuser operating
| | 00:20 | systems. If you are the only user on
your computer you are probably not aware
| | 00:24 | of that, but your user name will
appear on the left and that is the account
| | 00:29 | that you are logged in under. When you
restart your computer, you often have to
| | 00:33 | enter your username and password in
order to get access to your files.
| | 00:36 | So, the idea is that maybe there is
something in your Preferences settings.
| | 00:42 | In the Macintosh it would be in your Users
Library folder. Something here that is
| | 00:47 | conflicting with something else on
your computer that is causing the problems
| | 00:51 | in InDesign or with your InDesign documents.
| | 00:53 | Now I know it sounds out of left field
but I have seen this happen more than twice,
| | 00:57 | where for example, in InDesign
every time I opened up a panel, InDesign
| | 01:03 | would immediately quit. And after
doing all these troubleshooting steps,
| | 01:07 | I discovered that it was something in my
Library folder that was conflicting with
| | 01:11 | InDesign because when I tested it in a
new user account, the problem went away.
| | 01:16 | So, the question is how do you create a
new user account. Let me show you both
| | 01:20 | on the Macintosh and Windows. So on
Macintosh, you would go to the Apple and
| | 01:25 | go down to System Preferences and then
click Accounts in the System area. Now,
| | 01:29 | you have to be an Admin account on the Mac
in order to do this, because in order to
| | 01:35 | make changes, in order to create a test
account you have to click the security
| | 01:38 | lock and that's going to ask you for
an Admin password. So, if you are not an
| | 01:43 | Admin level user, you have to ask
your IT person to do this for you.
| | 01:46 | So, I'm typing in my password and then
to create a new user account and this
| | 01:51 | is in case you haven't created one yet,
all you do is click the plus symbol
| | 01:55 | right down here where my cursor is. So,
click plus. You want to create a new
| | 01:59 | account that has full privileges so
create a new Administrator account.
| | 02:03 | And give it a name of something really
simple, like test account, and the same
| | 02:08 | Short Name. I give it the same exact password.
| | 02:10 | So, I'm typing in test here and this is
probably not necessary because I'm not
| | 02:14 | going to forget. But at this point
I'm so freaked out over problems on my
| | 02:18 | Macintosh that I'm testing a test
account, I might actually forget what is the
| | 02:22 | password. So this will be reassuring to me
if in case I do. Then click Create Account.
| | 02:28 | Now, let's go over to Windows and I'll
show you how to create a test account there.
| | 02:34 | So, on Windows, go to your
control panel from your Start menu and look
| | 02:40 | for the icon or the link that says Add
or remove user accounts, click that.
| | 02:46 | And in Vista it's saying, this could
be dangerous, are you sure? Yes, yes,
| | 02:49 | continue. You can see that there is
only one account, my account and a Guest
| | 02:53 | account. Now, I want to create a new
account so I click that and I'll call this test.
| | 02:58 | I want it to be at Admin level
account, click Create Account and that's it.
| | 03:04 | Now, at this point what you need to do
is log out of your current account and
| | 03:09 | log in as the test account because
the test account is a completely generic
| | 03:14 | untouched account with just your basic system
software on that plus all of your applications.
| | 03:20 | So, on Windows you would go to the
Start menu and then come out here and choose
| | 03:25 | Log Off or if you choose Restart, the
same thing will happen is that you will
| | 03:29 | get a window that asks you for your
username and password to log back in. So,
| | 03:34 | I'll switch back to the Macintosh and
then the Macintosh to log out you go
| | 03:39 | under the Apple menu and choose Log Out
here. I'll go ahead and do that and log
| | 03:43 | in as my test account.
| | 03:47 | Okay, I have logged into my test user
account on the Macintosh side.
| | 03:52 | You can see it's got the default background,
the default doc on the bottom. Now, I need
| | 03:56 | to do is open up InDesign to see if
it's going to have the same problems or not.
| | 04:01 | So, I just go to my Applications
folder and then you can see that the
| | 04:05 | applications are shared among all
accounts on the computer. So, then I just
| | 04:09 | find InDesign CS4 and
double click it to start it up.
| | 04:12 | Now, if I want to just test InDesign
itself, if it was crashing at start up or
| | 04:18 | some panels weren't working correctly,
then that's all I would need to do.
| | 04:21 | If I want to actually test a document that
was giving me problems then realize that
| | 04:27 | if it's still sitting in your old user
account, you are not going to be able to
| | 04:30 | access it from this user account.
| | 04:32 | So, you needed to have either copied
it onto a Zip drive and then so you can
| | 04:37 | copy it back which I have done here.
You can see I have an AMC zip drive that's
| | 04:41 | already been inserted into my USB port
where I have the magazine that was given
| | 04:45 | me an issue. Or before you log out of
your old account, you can copy the file
| | 04:51 | to a folder to every user can access
on your computer. And this is available
| | 04:56 | for both Windows and the Mac.
| | 04:58 | So, on a Macintosh that folder is
actually in the Users folder, it's called
| | 05:03 | Shared. So, I have already copied
BlissMag.zip on to the shared drive.
| | 05:08 | So, you can do this from the old user account
before you log out. And then when you log
| | 05:13 | into the new user account, you just
go right to that shared folder and then
| | 05:16 | open it up. Now, of course I don't
have the fonts loaded on this test user
| | 05:21 | account so I'm getting the error about
missing fonts. Only the ones that are by
| | 05:26 | default installed with InDesign appear here.
| | 05:29 | But here I can see if I can replicate
the problem that was occurring in my
| | 05:35 | normal user account, and if I was
having problem printing, I try printing from
| | 05:40 | here or exporting from PDF it was just
scrolling or whatever. So, I'll go ahead
| | 05:44 | and run my tests and then decide if I
was having the problem or not having a
| | 05:48 | problem which I'll discuss as soon as
I log out of here and log back into my
| | 05:53 | normal user account.
| | 05:53 | All right, I have logged back into my
original account and now what I do next
| | 05:59 | depends on what I discovered in my
test account. If I discovered in the test
| | 06:04 | account that the problems are gone,
that InDesign works fine, that the
| | 06:08 | documents are printing fine or whatever.
Then I know that the issue has to do
| | 06:12 | with my original user account and
most likely you are going to find those
| | 06:17 | issues right here in the user Library
folder. Now, on Windows it would be also
| | 06:22 | in the users own Documents and Settings
folder, or whatever Windows calls that.
| | 06:26 | On the other hand if the problems
in the test account still occurred.
| | 06:31 | If InDesign is still crashing when I
opened up a panel or the documents were still
| | 06:35 | having issues then I know the problem
is more likely either the computer, like
| | 06:41 | the computer's own System folder which
is higher up in the hierarchy like here.
| | 06:45 | Or in the application itself, in
InDesign. And so I might either test the
| | 06:51 | document on another computer or uninstall
and reinstall InDesign on this computer.
| | 06:58 | In the next video, I show how to
uninstall and reinstall InDesign. And the very
| | 07:02 | last, last, last resort would be to
reinstall the system. But very likely you
| | 07:07 | are going to find that in the test
account, the problem is gone. And if so,
| | 07:12 | there are a couple of things you can do.
| | 07:13 | First of all, in your Library
folder you can remove some of the likely
| | 07:19 | culprits. There might be some items in
here that are conflicting with InDesign.
| | 07:23 | For example, there is a User Fonts
folder here and all you need to do is to
| | 07:28 | drag it out to the Desktop and drag
out anything else that you think maybe
| | 07:32 | causing some sort of problems, like
PreferencePanes, Recent Servers, whatever
| | 07:37 | you would like, Screen Savers, Snapz Pro,
and so on. Then you log out just like
| | 07:42 | how we logged out before and
then log back in again as yourself.
| | 07:45 | And if there were any required files
in the Library folder, the Mac will
| | 07:50 | automatically create them. I don't like
how InDesign automatically creates the
| | 07:53 | preferences when you delete the
preferences. Then you would start InDesign to
| | 07:57 | see if the problem is gone. Now, you
can either use the likely suspects method
| | 08:01 | like I did of dragging just some
folders out and testing it that way.
| | 08:04 | Or you can use the binary method of
the dragging out half of the contents of
| | 08:08 | this folder on to the Desktop and
restarting, sort of how I explained with
| | 08:12 | fonts and the images how
to troubleshoot those files.
| | 08:15 | Or if you are short on time and you
just want to confirm that it is your user
| | 08:19 | account that's causing the problem,
you can create an entirely new folder on
| | 08:23 | the Desktop. Call it something like Old
library and move everything into there.
| | 08:30 | The entire contents of the Library
folder, because none of this is required for
| | 08:34 | your computer to work.
| | 08:35 | Then you would log out, log back in
again, OS X will create or Windows will
| | 08:39 | create the required files here and then
you start up InDesign. There is nothing
| | 08:44 | in here that InDesign requires in order
to work. InDesign will just rebuild its
| | 08:48 | default preferences again. If InDesign
is working fine there and your documents
| | 08:52 | are working fine there, then you know
it's something from your Old library folder.
| | 08:56 | And you can just drag and drop the
things that you really want back over here
| | 09:00 | and for everything else just start
again with a fresh file. I know it sounds
| | 09:05 | kind of drastic to do this kind of
surgery to your Library file but it's
| | 09:09 | actually a lot easier then having to
reinstall the system and it's really
| | 09:13 | not that big of a deal.
| | 09:14 | I have seen it actually solve some
really tough InDesign problems in the past
| | 09:18 | and I recommend you give it a shot.
The worst that can happen is that you don't
| | 09:22 | like having your new library files here.
In that case, you can just delete them
| | 09:26 | and move the contents of your old
library back over. That's all, and then log
| | 09:31 | out and log back in again.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| 10. Reinstalling InDesign| 00:00 | So the 10th tip in this title for
troubleshooting InDesign files is to
| | 00:07 | uninstall InDesign and then reinstall.
And I left it as the last one because
| | 00:12 | it is the last resort. It always pains
me to hear people who say, "I can't get
| | 00:17 | this document to print. I have
already uninstalled and reinstalled InDesign
| | 00:21 | three times and it's still not helping."
It shouldn't be the first resort. It's the last resort.
| | 00:26 | So if you have tried all these
other troubleshooting steps and you have
| | 00:30 | definitely narrowed it down to how
InDesign is installed on your computer.
| | 00:35 | In other words, it's having the same
problem in multiple user accounts with
| | 00:38 | multiple documents, then there is no
other recourse other than to uninstall it.
| | 00:43 | Before you uninstall it, you should
consider deactivating it. So if you can get
| | 00:48 | InDesign to run, go to the Help menu
and choose Deactivate. If you remember,
| | 00:53 | you had to activate this program within
30 days otherwise it wouldn't run.
| | 00:58 | And deactivating it is just a fail safe.
You really don't have to, since you are
| | 01:02 | going to turn around and reinstall it
on the same computer. But what if for
| | 01:06 | some reason, you can't get it to
install right and you have to install it on a
| | 01:09 | second computer? You may have run out
of activations and you will have to call
| | 01:13 | Adobe and it's a big hassle.
| | 01:15 | So you should probably deactivate it
and then also make sure that you have your
| | 01:19 | serial number ready, because when you
reinstall it it's going to ask you for
| | 01:22 | that serial number again. And then you
can reactivate it after it's installed.
| | 01:26 | Now I'm not going to deactivate it at
this point. I'm just going to go ahead
| | 01:29 | and quit. Obviously you want to quit
InDesign before you uninstall it.
| | 01:33 | Now if you are on Windows, you would just
go to the control panel to Install and
| | 01:37 | Uninstall Programs and
then choose Adobe InDesign.
| | 01:41 | If you are on a Macintosh, you may
be tempted to just select the InDesign
| | 01:45 | folder and delete it. That's not the
right way to do it. Instead, look inside
| | 01:50 | your Adobe InDesign CS4 folder and
you will see that there is an Uninstall
| | 01:54 | Adobe InDesign CS4 application.
Actually it's an alias to where the application
| | 01:59 | actually is which is
higher up on your hard drive.
| | 02:02 | But double click on Uninstall InDesign
CS4 and you are going to have to put in
| | 02:05 | your Admin password. So you have to
have an Admin account. And then after the
| | 02:13 | Preparing to Uninstall dialog box goes
away then you will get a Loading Setup
| | 02:17 | dialog box. And this is what you
would get also in Windows if you chose to
| | 02:22 | uninstall InDesign from the control panel.
This program will automatically kick in.
| | 02:26 | Now because this InDesign was
installed by installing the Creative Suite 4
| | 02:30 | Master Collection then this is the
Uninstall window that we get. If you had
| | 02:34 | installed just the Creative Suite
Design collection or just InDesign then
| | 02:39 | your title would be different.
| | 02:40 | But you see there is a little warning
to make sure that you deactivate and then
| | 02:43 | you have your serial number ready.
And then on the right, you scroll through
| | 02:47 | what it is that you want to uninstall in here and
it's just InDesign is what we want to uninstall.
| | 02:52 | Now uninstalling InDesign does not
uninstall Preferences and reinstalling
| | 02:57 | InDesign does not write over
existing preferences. So if you also want to
| | 03:01 | remove the Preferences then you should
turn that on. If you have a folder that
| | 03:05 | has saved workspaces and glyph sets
and so on then you should probably back
| | 03:10 | that up some place.
| | 03:11 | And if you are not sure what I'm
talking about, watch the first video in this
| | 03:16 | title about rebuilding your Preferences
to see how you find the Preferences and
| | 03:20 | how you can make a back up copy.
| | 03:22 | So that's about it. From here you
just choose Uninstall, it's going to
| | 03:25 | uninstall the program, it might remove
the application Preferences at the same time.
| | 03:29 | And then you find your original
install CD or even the trial CD and
| | 03:33 | you install InDesign again
putting in your serial number.
| | 03:37 | One last tip is that after you install
InDesign, I'm going to quit out of this
| | 03:41 | installer and just go ahead and run
InDesign here to show you. Make sure and go
| | 03:46 | to the Help menu and choose Updates
because the original CD or the trial
| | 03:51 | versions only install the very first version
of InDesign CS4, which would be version 6.0.
| | 03:59 | And as of this recording it's already
up to version 6.0.1. So you want to make sure
| | 04:04 | and run the update patches on the
newly installed software and then that's
| | 04:08 | about it. Hopefully, your
problems will then be all solved.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
