Recovery and undo

InDesign guards your data against unexpected power or system failures using an automatic recovery feature. Automatically recovered data exists in a temporary file that is separate from the original document file on disk. Under normal circumstances you don’t need to think about automatically recovered data, because any document updates stored in the automatic recovery file are automatically added to the original document file when you choose the Save or Save As command or exit from InDesign normally. Automatically recovered data is important only if you’re unable to save successfully before an unexpected power or system failure.

Even though these features exist, you should save your files often and create backup files in case of unexpected power or system failures.

Find recovered documents

Change the location of recovered documents

Undo mistakes

If necessary, you can cancel a lengthy operation before it’s completed, undo recent changes, or revert to a previously saved version. You can undo or redo up to several hundred of the most recent actions (the amount is limited by the amount of RAM available and the kinds of actions you performed). The series of actions is discarded when you choose the Save As command, close a document, or when you exit from the program.

Automatically recover damaged documents

There are multiple factors, both internal and external to InDesign application, that can lead to document corruption. 

InDesign has an auto-repair mechanism that detects and automatically recovers a corrupted document. The recovered version of the document will open in InDesign prompting you to save the document before proceeding further.