Another way to repair a damaged InDesign file

I've written previously about a couple of sneaky ways to fix a damaged or corrupt InDesign file. If those methods fail, here's another file repair method to try:

A client came to me with a file that crashed every time that he tried to remove a certain paragraph style, or that he used Find Font to try to replace a certain font. It also crashed immediately when he tried to export an .inx or .idml file. What saved the day in this case was this workaround:

1. Open the bad InDesign file.

2. Create a new InDesign file with the same page size, orientation, and single/facing pages setting. Make this file only one page in length.

3. Choose File > Save, and name this file "Repaired file.indd" (a little optimism can't hurt!)

4. Switch to the bad InDesign file, and in the Pages panel, choose Move Pages.

5. Enter the page numbers you want to move, which page you want to move them after, and then in the "Move to" drop down list, select "Repaired file.indd".

6. When you click the OK button, all the pages from the old, damaged file will be "pushed" into the new, repaired file. Hopefully, any nasties that are causing problems in the old file will not move with the pages into the new file.

In this case, with this client, following the steps above fixed the problem, and the client was a happy camper!