I have a large InDesign book (159 documents) that recently started crashing when I export the whole thing. The book was created years ago, and I can't figure out what would cause this issue all of a sudden. Originally, I thought this was due to the linked cross references I recently added, since it's the only thing that's changed about the book. But I removed all cross references, and I'm still having the same issue. I can export the first half of the book, the second half of the book, or even 3/4 of the book successfully. It's just when I try to export the whole thing that InDesign crashes.
I'm using the latest version of InDesign CS 5.5 on OS X 10.8.2.
I have another discussion posted about this (http://forums.adobe.com/message/5132896), but decided to start a new thread since the other one was focused on the cross references. Toward the end of that discussion, people started suggesting that this was just an issue with my computer--that I don't have enough free space, etc. But I had my company's IT guy watch Activity Monitor while I tried to export the book, and he assured me that my computer is completely capable of completing this export. This makes sense to me since I've always been able to export the book using this computer, and the book hasn't gotten significantly larger or more complex.
One workaround we found was to export the book as an interactive PDF instead of a print PDF. However, I've been battling bolder text on pages with transparency for years, and exporting as an interactive PDF seems to make this issue much worse. (For more info on this issue, see the following thread: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/421267.)
Is there anyone smarter than me that has a guess as to why I'd be able to export the book as an interactive PDF, but not as a print PDF? I'm hoping this new info will help in troubleshooting the crashing.