Disable Adobe InDesign Background Tasks

Not long ago I upgraded from Adobe CS4 Design Premium and purchased Adobe CS5.5 Master Collection, and I can safely say that it was money well spent! However, I recently worked on a print job, and I noticed a particular “minor” change to the way Adobe InDesign works, which left me stumped and frustrated for answers.

Apparently as of the release of CS5, Adobe decided to add (or at least make us more aware of) a feature called Background Tasks.

Basically what Background Tasks does, for example, is it allows you to export a PDF file in the background while still being able to work on your InDesign file in the “foreground”. Pretty cool huh?

Well, if you’re not using Adobe InDesign CS5 or newer, here’s a screenshot of what it looks like when you have a PDF exporting in the background with the Background Tasks feature.

In itself, this new feature is a great addition for when you’re working on a small file, like a business card design or a 5 page brochure. However, I found that “trouble strikes” when you try to export large PDF documents and such – like a 100+ page document that I was trying to export!

What happens is, the progress bar keeps moving, but it really just hangs there and doesn’t seem to do anything – I even waited for about half an hour one time! Ridiculous!

This issue may not happen to everyone, but after doing a bit of Google’ing and research, I found that I wasn’t alone. I tried a couple of the solutions that I found which did the trick and disabled the background tasks, but I wanted the option of being able to turn it back on.

Well I was in luck! Apparently the new Background Tasks feature had annoyed a few too many people, that one smart guy, Marijan Tompa, created a cool startup script which adds a menu item to the File menu in InDesign that gives you the option switch Background Tasks on and off.

Basically what the script does, is when toggled on, it created an empty “DisableAsyncExports.txt” file in the same directory as the Adobe InDesign executable file:

• PC/Win: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS5\
• Mac: /Applications/Adobe InDesign CS5.5/Adobe InDesign CS5.5.app/Contents/MacOS/

For some auto-magical reason, that’s all that’s required to disabled the background exporting of any file in InDesign. Then when you toggle off the Background Export from the File menu, it removes the DisableAsyncExports.txt file which then enables the Background Tasks feature again.

To download this handy little startup script, click on the following link:
Marijan Tompa’s Background Export Toggle Script

Once you’ve download the ZIP file, you’ll need to unzip and move the controlBackgroundExport.jsx file into your startup scripts folder and then restart InDesign:

• PC/Win: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS5\Scripts\Startup Scripts\
• Mac: /Applications/Adobe InDesign CS5.5/Scripts/startup scripts/

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