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Indesign– links not updating for files on server

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Morgan19

IS-IT--Management
Aug 9, 2002
94
US
My company uses Indesign CS (on Mac OSX). We recently moved our job files over to a network drive, a Dell PowerEdge with Windows 2003 Standard Server, to help centralize operations. Problem is, I've noticed I couple oddities in Indesign when using the files on the server.

The most noteable and alarming hiccup is that linked images in an Indesign document no longer show "updated" icons when edited outside Indesign, nor can we re-insert an image to update the image manually.

As an example... Let's say I have a document with an image in it already up and running in Indesign. If I open up the image in Photoshop and save it, normally when going back to Indesign the Links panel would show that yellow ! icon to indicate that the file has been altered, so I would know to update the link and thus have the most recent image. Now that all our files are on the server, however, this doesn't happen: I get no indication that the graphic has been updated outside of Indesign. Even worse is that if I edit the graphic in Photoshop, save it, then go back into Indesign, click on the image, and try and insert the same image again (which before would always update it for me), nothing happens– despite having been updated and saved in Photoshop, the image will not change to the new version. I have to insert an entirely different image, then go *back* to the first one before it'll recognize the updated image.

Does anyone have any idea why Indesign (installed locally on each Mac) would be having this sort of trouble with files stored on a network drive? I know plenty of other agencies that operate off a central creative server, so surely this can be remedied somehow.

Thanks,
m19
 
Indesign says it's already 3.0.1, and running Updates tells me there are no further updates available. Thank you for the link, though; I search Adobe's site and had trouble finding the appropriate information. It looks like CS2 might solve the issue, but that remains to be seen.

m19
 
If you bought ID as part of Creative Suite premium, have you looked at the included Version Cue? It has some more services for managed (servers) projects.

One other thing yu can always try is to quit ID and trash prefs (hard drive/user/library/preferences/com.adobe.InDesign.plist.

Trashing prefs sometimes does magical things for getting Adobe apps to behave better.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4
 
We do have Version Cue, yes, but I wanted to get this little quirk ironed out first. ;)

Rather than start another thread, hopefully someone can assist with this, as well. I checked out CS2 on Newegg and it indicates that one boxed copy is only good for one user. Is that true? The reason I ask is because we currently have four Macs on the same network running instances of CS, having been installed from the same discs. That leads me to believe there were multiple licenses with the version of CS we bought. If I were to purchase CS2, would I need to get *four copies for each Mac to run it concurrently...?

m19
 
...i believe you will purchase four upgrade licences if you go to CS2, not four discs, Adobe sell licenses not copies...

...I'd be inclined to investigate the version cue that you have unless your company is happy to spend the cost of upgrading...

Andrew
 
It's not just for this. We were looking at going to CS2 anyway, so this is just more incentive.

I'm not sure I'm following, though: Version Cue just helps you manage multiple files and whatnot, correct? I don't see how VC would help the specific problem of Indesign not updating links properly... *That's* the main issue I want to try and resolve.

m19
 
...version cue was created and engineered for a group workflow, and a much more stable approach too. If you are experiencing problems and version cue isn't working then I would consider other avenues...

...by the time you may have found a solution to your server problems, version cue could have been tried and tested in a shorter space of time I believe...

Andrew
 
But that still doesn't answer my original issue.

Workflow isn't the problem: Indesign not working properly with files on a network is, which has nothing to do with workflow and everything to do with Indesign not functioning properly.

As I said, if someone is aware of a way that Version Cue can fix this problem in Indesign, I'm all for it. Unfortunately, even the page you linked to says my 3.0.1 version of ID should be working and it's not; the other option was CS2.

Trust me, I appreciate the suggestion and I'm sure it's a good idea, but as far as I can tell Version Cue will do nothing to remedy the problem Indesign is having with the network files.

m19
 
...yes, i understand, a real headache when network issues arise like this...

...if mac sharing works ok this will point to a network server configuration problem...

...if you can get version cue to work then it also eliminates indesign as the issue and the root cause will likely be the server configuration and not actually indesign...

...if both the above fail, then your server sharing setup may need to be looked at or a complete upgrade to CS2 and hope that this will solve your problem...

Andrew
 
...out of interest do you use quark? if links work ok across the network with quark and modified appears in utilities using the same shared directory then this will point to an indesign issue...

...all the best with it, i'm with the mind of process of elimination when it comes to network issues such as these and I completely understand your frustrations too...

...I'm sure you will resolve your issue soon and all will be worthwhile...

Andrew
 
Hi Morgan 19, have you checked the locations of the images you're linked to in InDesign? When you open your photos, do you use the "Edit original" in InDesign?

When we changed servers, there was a backup made and our files were linked to it instead of the new drive. This caused a problem similar to the one you described. The photos we were editing were not the same ones in our ID documents although they had the same name.

Good luck.
 
Just an update: I'm trying to CS2 download trial and it's having the same problem, as well.

jcape:

I don't think it's holding on to anything from a backup, as I still get the non-updating links by creating a brand-new document and image to link to on the drive.

m19
 
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