Frequent freezes and drastically increased file size during and after relinking PDFs (Publisher)

[Balázs Bodó]

Hi,

I have some quite large documents (200-400 pages each) with a lot of linked images (I mean several hundreds) and some PDFs (created with the datamerge tool). File size is decent (20-40 MB), during edits and scrolling the software uses all the available RAM (32G), sometimes it becomes a bit instable, but I got used to save pretty frequently. The attached PDFs are vector architecture plans (original size is 2000/1600 mm, 300 dpi, 5-15 MB). In a file, one or two of these PDFs are linked, but numerous times (I attached one, then copied, reframed multiple times). And just for emphasis: all documents are linked, not embedded!

Everything went decently until I needed to republish the original PDFs. Publisher warns that the files are updated. I tried to relink/refresh them through Resource Manager, but many times (after a decent amount of time) the software froze out or if miraculously succeeded, the file size increased from the original 20-40 MBs, to several hundreds or even several GBs! For me it seems like the software refreshes all instances individually and bakes all instances separately in the file (sizewise) - although R.M. still shows the updated PDFs as linked. Now the only way I see to keep these files working (fortunately after the first try, I made backups of the original) is deleting all frames (one by one! horror, as I cannot delete all instances in Resource Manager...), importing the PDFs again in one frame (it takes a few minutes), then copy and reframe everything AGAIN (at least an hour per document). And if I would need to refresh these documents once again (for this project, I don't think so, but later in a similar case it might needs to be refreshed several times), the process start all over again just to relink 10 files... Is there a better way to do it or is it a bug? Or do I need a more powerful hardware (filesize-wise there should be no difference; but what would be the recommended hardware for projects of this size? PC or Mac, whatever)...

The hardware I used: Win 11 desktop (Pro 24H2); Intel i7 11700K; 32GB RAM The Publisher version is 2.6.2 (installed through Microsoft Store).

Thank you for the tips and all the help in advance.

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Balázs Bodó & apologies for the late response,

The sudden file size inflation following an external linked resource update sounds like a bug. If you can provide the original document before encountering the issue, I can confirm if it can be reproduced. So i'm able to access the full file and all its contents go to File -> Save as Package -> Save to an empty folder in Explorer -> Compress the folder to a .ZIP. I've provided a private upload link below.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/6ChChQmeMHMqVcz5Za5T

Possible Workarounds:

• In Settings -> General disable 'Automatically update linked resources when modified externally' When modifications are made to linked resources, you can then manually update them in RM in smaller batches.
• If the resources are linked to an external location (Cloud, Network Drive, USB/External Drive) try linking them to a local location.

There is a known issue related to accessing Resource Manager, causing app hangs and poor performance when working in larger documents, so you may also be encountering this issue.

[Balázs Bodó]

Thank you for the answers, Nathan!

Unfortunately I cannot provide you a copy of the document due to contract and confidentiality agreements, sensible informations. But thank you for the workarounds, I will certainly try them later. Can I ask, if I embed the above mentioned PDFs: 1. will it embed the one document only or all instances individually? 2. if I decide, it is time to update an embedded file, is it likely to crash the same way? The files became quite unstable after attaching the documents. Would embedding help? Unfortunately some of the files (mainly the hundreds-thousands of photos) could not be copied from network drive to local, but I can move (or embed) the PDFs.

Thank you once again for the enormous help.

[NathanC]

No problem, It's perfectly understandable that the file can't be shared if it's confidential.

In terms of embedding, If it's a singular PDF placed multiple times it will appear in RM as the 'Parent' resource, expanding the dropdown arrow to the left will reveal all the placed instances of that same resource. If you were to select the Parent resource and embed it, all instances of that same resource will also update to the embedded policy. Only one instance of the resource is actually embedded within the file, so any changes to one will reflect on all of them.

Embedding could certainly help, but It's best to make a backup of your original .afpub file first with everything, and then try embedding the resources to compare.