Updating InDesign Server

calendar Jul 24, 2023 · 2 min read · indesign server  ·
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Updating InDesign Server (IDS) is relatively straight forward although there are a couple of things to be aware of.

At the time of writing you install the new version on top of the old one.

Make sure your system meets the minimum requirements for the new version of IDS.

Then create a "Package" in the Adobe Admin Console with the newer version of IDS that you want to update to.

Then close everything. If you have the InDesign Server Windows Service running it needs to be stopped. Stop all running applications. We have a service running that calls into IDS, this also needed stopping.

Extract the package and run setup.exe "as Administrator". When updating to v18.5 Setup.exe was here: \dart-dv-ids-18.5_en_GB_WIN_64\dart-dv-ids-18.5\Build\

Run setup as administrator

It should just install. If you have the [Windows Service installed]https://benwood.dev/post/2023/2023-01-24-indesign-server-in-azure/#windows-service-and-mmc-snap-in it starts up as well. And that's it.

If it fails a dialog will popup saying check the PAApp.log which may not be too helpful. There is a list of install errors here which may also not be too helpful!

After IDS install or update calls to preflight() don't work unless you manually edit ExportPreflightReport.jsx

If you plan on running preflight programmatically against IDS then you'll need to manually edit the ExportPreflightReport.jsx file found here (in v18.*): C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign Server 2023\Scripts\Preflight

The changes you need to make are at the bottom of this post on the Adobe Community forum.

  1. Wherever 'arguments' appears it needs replacing with 'this.arguments'
  2. In the CreateWorkingDoc() function this line needs the false parameter removed: 
    1var doc = app.open(templateFile, false);
2becomes:
3var doc = app.open(templateFile);

If you don't make these changes, calls to preflight on IDS just don't work (the script, ExportPreflightReport.jsx, works on InDesign Desktop).

Update 5 Sep 2023: This is now logged as a bug on Adobe's User Voice InDesign Server bugs topic.

Update 13 Sep 2023: IDS v19.0 in prerelease stil requires the above changes to ExportPreflightReport.jsx