How to Solve the “Missing plugins” error in Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is useful software and therefore has a significant number of users. However, several InDesign users have recently reported the message “Cannot open the file. Adobe InDesign plug-ins are missing. Please update your plugins to the latest versions.” It appears when users try to open a file created with Adobe InDesign on their computer.

What causes the Adobe InDesign Missing Plugins error?

  • The error occurs after installing a third-party plugin for Adobe InDesign.
  • When using certain plug-ins included with InDesign.
  • Errors associated with plug-ins associated with certain documents.
  • Sometimes the error indicates that certain “plug-ins are missing“.
  • The error also occurs when referring to a specific plug-in in a collision log file.

How to fix the “missing plug-ins” error in Adobe InDesign?

Remove the plugin information from your file

  1. Open the InDesign program.
  2. Click File, then choose the Export option.
  3. Export the file in .idml format.
  4. The .idml file format can be opened in any previous version of Adobe InDesign.
  5. After opening the file in InDesign (for example, CS3), simply save it as .inx and export it as a “.indd” file to remove all of the plugin information stored in that file.
  6. After completing this process, check to see if the error message appears again.

Tip: This method should help if the program reports a plugin missing (model.indesignplugin channels) error. The problem occurs when you try to open an old .indd file. read more