One other cause for a slow In. Design is if you’re working over a network and the “pipes are clogged” … slow connections, slow ports, overloaded router, underpowered server. Even if the ID file in on your local drive, if you’ve placed images from the server, then redrawing the high res previews or something could slow things down.
Why is InDesign so slow?
If the problem goes away, then perhaps it’s something else system-wide going on. All that said, there are some times when In. Design is just always going to be slow. For example, it tends to quit slowly — and the longer you’ve been using it, the longer it takes to quit.
This of course begs the query “Why does InDesign take so long to export?”
Typically it is a font issue that can slow In. Design to a crawl. When I re-open one of these IDML exports, a find font error (that I am able to fix) dialog opens.
One way to make In. Design a lot faster on moderately equipped machines is to break up long documents into books made of several In, and design files. I once (long time ago) worked on a 240 page file on a computer with around 512 MB of RAM. Without the book feature, every dialog box would always take several seconds to open.
One of the next things we wanted the answer to was how can I speed up InDesign response time?
By selectively turning off features of In. Design, you can speed up the response time. Try these strategies on that next big document. By deselecting the On checkbox while you build, you lighten the load considerably. Save that Live Preflight session for the late stages of the project.
Why is my text so slow in InDesign?
Text that threads across many pages slows down In. Design, because a change on one page triggers an adjustment to them all. Add some anchored graphics and the text flow adjustments get even more complicated.
Is Adobe’s “speed up your InDesign” chart offensive?
Things like the “speed up your in. Design” chart suggesting little workarounds are offensive and more than slightly apologist, as if Adobe is some open source volunteer effort and we should help them along.
What is the problem with in-design?
I believe it’s In-designs incapability to utilize the all the RAM and other hardware. Windows 7 ultimate SP1 64bit. When looking in the task manager In-design never uses much ram despite having 32gb or so to play with.