Hi John
And welcome aboard!
Please try to quit InDesign completely and restart it – this error code shows that InDesign throws an error when trying to open the InDesign layout.

Let me know if it worked for you

Glad we could help.

With the newest major version 1.6.8 merging styles is faster than before. Make sure to have an actual version (Backup your project files if you currently have a version older than 1.6.0).
For optimizing, please send us the project fully packed with MyDataMerge Menu > File > Package and include everything. You might replace data by dummy data you can find here (as long as no conditions related to data are used): https://mydatamerge.com/downloads/dummy-data/
Thats the most fastest way we can inspect your project and help optimizing it. We hereby guarantee to delete all data immediately once this support request is closed.

You may send it to support@toolboxcode.com.

Hi John – please abort it and try the following thins

Here are a few hints to merge faster (still you might send us the files for more precise help):

1. Do not set Desktop as target path! macOS Catalina for example is known to slow things down when saving on desktop
2. Move all static parts that are not part of the actual merge to master pages
3. Resize your images (!) – this is very important as InDesign has to handle all image data again and again for every document created. If you output anything other than InDesign (e.g. PDF) this will have a huge impact on speed (imagine for every PDF each image has to be compressed and saved by InDesign)
4. Do not apply a style in the merge if it can be applied in InDesign (cause it doesn’t change dynamically). Or apply a base style in InDesign and only let the merge change those few exceptions necessary.
5. Check if it’s really a MyDataMerge thing or rather a thing of InDesigns processing: While exporting click on the icon in the top right corner to see the log. Check if most of the time you are “Waiting for XXX to be created” which indicates that InDesign is processing things.

Hi John

i sent you an optimized file. We were able to go down from one minute to roughly 3 seconds per file. Please check the attached file in the email.

Depending on your final goal there’s still room for massive speed improvements. E.g. if your final goal is “printing” and you don’t care if each record has its own file then there’s another technic using Multiple Records. I sent you another zip containing a project and InDesign file going down to 0,25 seconds per record. So round about 4-5 Minutes for 1000 records. (we just exported 1000 records in 4 Minutes, 38 seconds)