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Error converting Word document to PDF

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cwadams1955

Programmer
Jan 21, 2008
52
CA
Hi,

The office staff here has a couple of custom templates that they've been using for several years now to generate company letters. The company was bought by another firm, and about two weeks ago this office's network was attached to the new company's domain; login scripts were changed, security permissions, desktop settings, and so forth. Since that time, staff has been unable to convert their documents. Monday I started digging into the problem and found an Adobe Knowledgebase article referencing corrupted .icc files at this link:


The error referenced was not exactly the same, but it was the closest thing I've been able to find, so I decided to give it a shot.

Late Monday I went through the steps in the article on one of the problem workstations, and the error went away - was able to do seven or eight conversions successfully, so I saved the files and instructions for use the next day. Yesterday I started to do the same process on the other three workstations, but it had no effect on them, and in the middle of this, I was notified that now the first workstations has stopped working again, also - it was neither turned off nor rebooted overnight, but the same error is appearing again. Repeating the process from the day before does nothing now to correct the error, nor can I convert the *same test document* that I converted successfully multiple times the day before. Hopefully someone can point me in a direction to start looking.

Machines: Dell and HP, various hardware.
Example: Dell Pentium 4, 3.20 GHz, 3.00 GB RAM

OS: Windows XP Pro, v2002, SP2
MS-Word 2003 SP2
Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard, v6.0.6
Adobe Distiller v6.0.1

Inside Word, Adobe Conversion Settings:
Use prologue.ps and epilogue.ps
Conversion Settings file: Custom template settings (standard doesn't work, either)
Enable accessibility & reflow with tagged PDF is checked
Compatibility - Acrobat 5.0
Color settings file - "None" (some machines have Web Standard selected, which also doesn't work.)
Color management policies - Leave color unchanged
Imbed fonts - checked on two W/S, one has several fonts excepted
- unchecked on two W/S

Process:
Letter template has macros which insert a logo in the document at print time, check tables, do calculations, check for "forbidden words". Template also contains a TOC. To test this, I simply open Word, make sure the macros are loaded (since the login scripts changed, this has to be done manually,) and create a new document from the proper template. There is a startup macro that can be simply bypassed (all it does is allow operator to change the office location, otherwise just leave the default,) and then from the "Adobe PDF" option on the Word menu bar, select "Convert to PDF". If the complete conversion runs, this may take up to a couple of minutes to finish, then the converted document is opened in Acrobat. What happens now is that the conversion process starts, then the process bar hangs for a few seconds and we get a messagebox stating: "Adobe pdf printer failed to create the pdf file"

Most of the time, it doesn't seem to produce an errorlog, but if it does, this is what I see in the log:

%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: pdfmark ]%%

Stack:
[{FMSMColorLogo}]
[{FMSMColorLogo}]
-mark-

%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
 
Try "printing" the pdf choosing Adobe virtual printer as your printer. Make sure your Distiller settings are appropriate for the quality of pdf you need.

With all the changes there is also a chance that you got corruption in the app or its settings. It might help to trash the prefs for Distiller and see what happens.

Using OSX 10.3.9 & 10.4.11 on a G4, G5 & Intel Macbook
 
Printing to the Adobe printer gets the same error, and I actually created a new set of preferences for the Distiller a couple of days ago. I may need to just get the IT administrator to remove all of the Adobe apps and re-install, but I kinda think that was already done, too.
 
There's a difference between creating new Distiller settings and trashing preferences. The preferences file must be trashed to see if there's corruption or not. New settings will not reveal corruption. Acrobat must be off when this is done.

If you have the apps reinstalled make sure the IT guy trashes all prefs before reinstalling. The reinstall will not remove the old, possibly corrupted, prefs file.

The single biggest cause of problems with all Adobe apps is a corrupted prefs file.

Using OSX 10.3.9 & 10.4.11 on a G4, G5 & Intel Macbook
 
Another area to try cleaning up, after checking the preferences for corruption:

Acrobat uses a hidden temp folder on the hard drive, and when this folderis excessively large (for any reason) Acrobat seems to fail more and more frequently.

Open a run command. Type in: %temp%
press enter to open the hidden folder. These are all temp files that do not need to be retained for any reason. They can all be safely deleted. The system will recreate this temp file the next time it needs it. A file in use will not allow you to delete it, so you can skip over it and keep deleting. For best results I recommend you do a hard boot before cleaning the temp folder as the majority of files will be released in the shut down process (not a reboot).
Samaba
 
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