Cross-references slow ID5 down

I'm using ID5 (7.0.2) on Win XP.
I'm editing a 10 document book and as soon as I started cross-references the editing became unbearably slow - every character takes a second to update and hard drive is constantly in use.
Performance is set to fast, live update disabled, hyphenation is off, etc. etc., but no luck.
As a test, I copied one of the documents and deleted cross-references - the speed returned to normal even at high quality display and live redraw.
Any ideas how to resolve the issue? Any chance of switching updating cross-references off? Any good advise is appreciated.
An update: it seems that only cross-references that point to the external files cause the delay - I've got the impression that ID5 tries to open, update and close all the referenced files after every key stroke!
As an addition test, I opened all referenced files at once and - voila! - almost no delay (only due to the immense usage of memory by the opened documents).
I still would appreciate if anyone knows how to switch off dynamic cross-reference update.

Dr Axly wrote:
I'm using ID5 (7.0.2) on Win XP.
I'm editing a 10 document book and as soon as I started cross-references the editing became unbearably slow - every character takes a second to update and hard drive is constantly in use.
Performance is set to fast, live update disabled, hyphenation is off, etc. etc., but no luck.
As a test, I copied one of the documents and deleted cross-references - the speed returned to normal even at high quality display and live redraw.
Any ideas how to resolve the issue? Any chance of switching updating cross-references off? Any good advise is appreciated.
Dr Axly wrote:
I'm using ID5 (7.0.2) on Win XP.
I'm editing a 10 document book and as soon as I started cross-references the editing became unbearably slow - every character takes a second to update and hard drive is constantly in use.
Performance is set to fast, live update disabled, hyphenation is off, etc. etc., but no luck.
As a test, I copied one of the documents and deleted cross-references - the speed returned to normal even at high quality display and live redraw.
Any ideas how to resolve the issue? Any chance of switching updating cross-references off? Any good advise is appreciated.
[EDIT] I saw your update. It's pretty clear that the trade-off is using memory to keep files open and gain speed, or saving memory and working slowly. Perhaps a compromise would be to open only those files referred to from the file you're editing? [/EDIT]
Have you seen any improvement when you close the book and unused files, and edit one file at a time? I believe the changed x-refs should update when you reopen them and the book.
If you are a very patient person, you can file a feature change request at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform, and someday, perhaps, InDesign will offer the option to switch live x-ref updates off.
If you're in a production-deadline situation, you may want to look at the commercial InDesign Cross-References Pro plug-in from dtptools.com. It can convert your existing InDesign x-refs to its own, quickly, and it has the option to turn live x-ref updates on/off.h
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices
Message was edited by: peter at knowhowpro

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Indesign CS6 Very slow - cross-references?

Dear All,
I have been struggeling with this for over 2 days now..
I've treid the following solutions on the Adobe website
http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/slow-performance-indesign-cs5.html
and http://indesignsecrets.com/why-is-indesign-soooo-slow.php
It does not seem to work.
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My pc has 8 gb ram, 2.5 Ghz and around 40 GB free HD space.
I think it might be my cross references, but I don't know how to fix it..
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@Daan – I do not much with cross references, but several users here and in other forums report performance issues when working with cross references.
There is a 3rd party solution by DTP Tools:
http://www.dtptools.com/product.asp?id=crin
You could test a trial version.
(And report back here how fast it is :-) )
Uwe

Cross references causing ID to bog down

I hope this is my last question for a while . . . I have a ID book document containing hundreds of cross references across several documents. Whenever I open one or more of the files, ID starts blinking the busy cursor at me (interspersed with a ready cursor that goes away before you can actually do anything). This swirling busy cursor just goes and goes and goes--I suspect that the application is checking all the hundreds of cross references over and over again. However, nothing is changing on those refs and the "checking" behavior is practically making InDesign useless. I can't do anything without waiting minutes for ID to finally calm down and let me click on something again. Is there anyway to turn off that constant reference checking or maybe convert all the cross references to static hyperlinks so ID will operate normally?

Hey, seconding this problem! This is beyond annoying and into "why didn't I buy Quark Xpress". There HAS to be a way to prevent this from occurring. Somebody?? Anybody?? Buhler??

Cross references are just unusable

As stated in several other discussions (with NO answers), using cross references in a multi-document book is ridiculous. Every single change made in the document cause a slow-down that is just absurd -- it's taking me 10 minutes to change a SINGLE WORD. Does Adobe or anyone else have a solution to this problem? Because without one, you might as well just throw the feature away. Totally useless.

nick25 wrote:
Sometimes you just have to chuckle. After a relaxing night, I come back to once again face this dopey issue. I open the book, then one of the documents therein. I make ONE a ONE-CHARACTER CHANGE and watch as the document I opened goes out and opens another document in the book, one that it obviously contains cross references to, FIFTEEN TIMES IN A ROW (yes, I counted), probably once for each link in the document. Obviously, I am now going to open that other document FIRST to hopefully speed up the process. But you just have to laugh -- maybe I CAN laugh because it's Friday -- at how a programmer at Adobe can let something as blatantly stupid as this happen in a finished product. Oh, and I bet this is going to make exporting to PDF and any indexing completel impossible, too. Thanks Adobe, for this brilliant "design". Wow.
Not fun, I agree.
Just a wild guess: have you verified that Preferences > File Handling > Links > Check Links Before Opening Document is disabled (unchecked?) I don't know if x-refs are processed by this option, but it's a possibility worth trying. And, if your docs contain many links, it's probably worth disabling whenever it won't affect your work.
Other slow-down features I don't think have been mentioned include Preferences > Spelling > Dynamic Spelling, and Preferences > Autocorrect. Disabling both of these may improve text handling.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Cross-reference formatting

Hello:
In one of my documents, I've increased the font size of the body tag but now my cross references look smaller than the surrounding text. They appear to be wrapped in a body tag but the font and point size pull-downs in the toolbar appear blank when you click on a cross reference. I'm sure that it must be something easy but I can't seem to figure out why this occurs. Can someone enlighten me AND give me a fix? I'm using v8.0p277.
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Kimberly

Assuming that you have a character tag around the cross-refs, e.g. one named "SpecialLinkColor" that turns text to Magenta:
In MIFBrowser, or in a text editor, you'd be looking first for the section called "FontCatalog", which is the MIF-speak term for the Character tags catalog.
Then look at the properties that are listed within the FontCatalog for the "Font" that has the FTag name of "SpecialLinkColor".
So for example if SpecialLinkColor chartag is only supposed to change the color of the text it's applied to, the only property of the tag should be "FColor = 'Magenta" [along with the default properties of the FLocked= and FSeparation=]
There should be nothing else like FFamily=xx or FSize=xx.
If there are other properties like FSize, then that means that the character tag is applying all of those properties to the text.
If this is the case then would need to change the character tag to only apply the color (or whatever) property.
Changing a character tag takes a little more finesse, so let's start with just determining if there are character tags applied to the text and then what the character tag properties are, then we'll address how to globally change it to apply only the one property rather than the font size etc etc.
BIG reminder, please be sure to make a good backup of your files before creating the MIF or looking at it in a text editor, so that "inevitable things" don't go bump.

Cross-Reference update

It would be great to have a better interface for Cross-References.
1. Don't reset the source everytime Insert is pressed.
This is seriously annoying if you want to insert a bunch of references over and over. You have to reselect the Document and scroll down the list of paragraphs.
2. Improve the Go to Source view.
If the Cross-Reference is similar to other sources it is dificult to know which one you are selecting. Imagine a table with numbers in it and several cells have the same value. You can't easily figure out what you are referencing. Maybe a preview window would be better?

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Acrobat 9 Pro: Links to Word TOC and cross references are lost

I'm testing Acrobat 9 Pro and while it successfully creates a PDF from Word 2003 with bookmarks, all my TOC and internal page reference links are lost.
I have triple checked the conversion settings from the Adobe PDF menu option in Word, and the "Convert cross-references and table of contents to links" check box is definitely selected.
I used the same Word document on another machine with Acrobat 6 Pro installed - and the TOC and cross ref links were created successfully. As far as I can see the Adobe PDF settings in Word 2003 on both machines are the same - the only difference is that one uses Acrobat 6 Pro and the other uses Acrobat 9 Pro.
The only setting in 9 Pro I turned off was the 'enable accessibility tagging' one; it's also turned off in 6 Pro. The remaining settings are the default.
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Anybody have any suggestions? Or can anybody confirm that they do/don't get the same behavior in Acrobat 9 Pro?

Thanks Abhigyan - your test PDF worked fine for me.
This is what I've done today:
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2. Deleted all Acrobat 5 and 6 folders and subfolders still lurking in Program Files.
3. Used Add/Remove to delete Adobe Reader 8 and its updates. I figure I can always install Reader 9 if I need it as a separate app.
4. Checked that everything was gone using the Windows Installer CleanUp utility (it was).
5. Restarted my machine.
6. Turned off my anti-virus software.
7. Did a search for any pdfm*.dot files - found one only in the current Microsoft Office folder and left it there.
8. Reinstalled Acrobat 9 Professional.
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10. Checked all the Acrobat conversion settings and left them as the defaults.
11. Converted the doc to PDF and checked for internal links. Yes! The TOC links worked! But my joy was short-lived as the page link didn't work...
12. Tried various other conversion settings based on some suggestions from Lance in first level Adobe Support yesterday - still no page link. And I also lost the TOC links when I cleared the Enable Accessibility check box on the Settings tab of the conversion settings.
13. Checked the Edit > Preferences > Convert To PDF settings for Word in Acrobat 9 - add bookmarks and add links are both selected (default).
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Colour confusion in cross-reference format -- help!?

(FrameMaker version 8.0p277)
We recently applied revised templates to our documents and I am not having problems with my cross-reference formats.
When setting an xref to a heading/table/figure on another page, I want it to say (for example) "Figure 2-3 on page 17", where "Figure 2-1" is blue, and "on page 17" is the default text colour (for these docs, that would be black).
When I insert an xref and choose a display format as described above, the text appears properly (blue, then black).
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Thanks

And... I think I have it (sorry to have dragged you all along for the ride :-)
With the Character Designer displayed, moved cursor through text. Found that the Character Tag field changed to <Blue> after the last character of the offending x-refs. <Blue> was an old tag used in the previous template. It does *not* appear in the character font catalog (and does not appear in the drop-down character tag list either).
Solution (it seems):Select the text section and apply the DefaultFont format (everything goes black). Then update the book. Most of the xrefs display correctly. Some, however, remain all black. Double-click the xref and then click Replace, and it now has the proper format.
Will go through doc and do updates -- if more problems arise, will let you know!
(As an aside... if somebody can explain what is actually happening in a clear way, that would be great :-)
Thanks again.

Indesign CS6 crashes every time I try to insert a cross reference.

Each time I try to insert a cross references the who program crashes and shuts down.
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Adobe Design and Web Premium CS6

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Creating a "space" for insertables characters in cross references

Is it possible to create a cross reference that has a "space" where text can be inserted later? I am thinking of a reference like "see No. __ in Fig.42 on page 8-3" with __ being the space where the number from the image can be inserted. My idea for a cross reference would be like this:
see No. <$inputChar><$inputChar> in Fig. <$AbsNumExkl> on page <$chapnum>-<$SeiteNum>. The tag <$inputChar> being a space for an insertable character. Is such a thing possible in FrameMaker or is there even a default tag in FrameMaker for such a "space"? I haven't a clue what I should be looking for to find a solution, hence posting my question here.
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Hi Matt,
and thanks first of all for your reply. Indeed I am looking to "call up" a call reference in an image. I have a document where the images have call-outs IN the images (bitmaps). I have only just now started to use FrameMAker 11 and i just stumbled across the Hottspot feature (I am not sure when the Hotspot feature was included) and will delve into that sometime when I have the time.. (harhar), hoping I migt find a work around to meet my needs with that.
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The Xref I CAN refer to without problem naturally is "Fig. 42, Page 87", but as you can see, I had hoped to be able to "be lazy" and have FM automatically also put down "see No." for me but leaving some space, where it is possible to insert text, meaning to leave a blank of some sorts in the "code" of the cross reference. Theoretically the Xref would be interrupted where text could be inserted (in the example fill in the "__" in my example).
Does makle that a little clearer?
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still slightly
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How to fix crashing when PDF and procedure for cross reference?

I'm using Frame 8. When I try to PDF my book, Frame crashes. I have tried PDFing the individual chapters, but that didn't work.
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Several things could be causing the crashing during the PDF creation process.
1. Have you applied the MS hotfix mentioned here?
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2009/07/repost_hotfix_for_framemaker.html
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Row level security in Cross References Section

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A couple of additional points.
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Cindy,
If the table heading is quoting the user interface it should match the user interface exactly. If the table title is not formally quoting the user interface you should not try to force it to do so. I am aware this is not the technical answer you were looking for.
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http://forums.adobe.com/thread/692546?tstart=0
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/738512?tstart=90
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/738452?tstart=120

The first thing to try is trash your prefs. See Replace Your Preferences

InDesign Cross References with DTP's Cross References PRO

There are already posts all over the forum about how inter-document cross references in InDesign are "fragile" and slow and can cause crashing, which I recently learned the hard way. We tried to live with the slowness and the breaking links, but the show-stopper was that we couldn't export our largest book without InDesign crashing. (The book contains 150+ individual documents.)
Based on some recommendations, we are now using a trial of DTP's Cross References PRO plug-in for InDesign. I removed all cross references that were created using InDesign's native cross references, and added several new ones using the plug-in. The slowness has gone away and the cross references don't seem to be breaking anymore, but InDesign still crashes when I try to export our book. DTP's support people insist that their plug-in should be able to handle large books, unlike InDesign. (And I've heard very good things about their support.) Is it possible that our files and/or book are corrupted from when we had the native InDesign cross references? Has anyone switched from native InDesign cross references to DTP cross references?

I don't think it's been determined if you have the latest ID update for your version of ID? BTW, which version are you using?
Where is the "too many files open" message coming from? Operating System (which?) ID? What's the exact message? A screen shot would help. Back in the days of DOS and early Windows, there were commands to set the number of permitted files open at once. Not sure how to do it in modern OSs. If it's an ID message, perhaps someone's got a suggestion.
Some folks on the forum like to see crash files so they can try to analyze them. Search Google for terms like "adobe forum indesign pastebin" without quotes to find some of those postings and learn how to send your crash report files there, and look at the names of those who volunteer to analyze the files.
I was thinking that two book container files that hold the same total number of files in the original single book might lighten the processing load and perhaps avoid a crash. With some work, I think it's possible to get the pagination and other numbering schemes, and x-refs to emulate a single book. I think that this is different from exporting half the files from one book, then the other half. It's not tested, just a thought. One other thought is to remove one file at a time from the book, starting at either the beginning or end, and export, until you find the maximum number of files that succeed consistently. Then try from the other end, to see if the crash happens with the same number of files, or perhaps same number of pages, or even, perhaps, at the same page. Perhaps the number of cross-references in the content is related to the crash. Again, just brainstorming.
You might explore with DTPTools support whether they'd want to see your crash files, to determine if the problem traces to their plug-in. Also, perhaps they'd like to look at your whole project - if it's permissable with your company or client, to see if DTPTools' techs can reproduce the crash.
erin.miska wrote:
We've actually never had the InDesign files open while exporting the book and never had a problem. Just to be sure, I tried this. We actually have too many files to open at one time, but I opened as many as I could. Still crashed.
Can you help me understand your thought behind the second option? What am I troubleshooting by having cross references that point to a document in another book?

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