Acrobat 6.01 Pro freezes converting PowerPoint

[jamesrome@adobeforums.com]

This is really frustrating. It has been over an hour now, and it says sending page 62 (the last one) and converting page 9. I have 2 GB of memory, of which Acrobat is only using 50 MB. It froze much faster if I tried the acrobat icon in PowerPoint. It has gotten this far by printing to PDF. The original PowerPoint is only 2.5 MB. It is sitting at 100% cpu and nothing is changing in the progress bar or the Adobe PDF printer box.

Clearly this is a bug. Others in archived forums complained about similar things and there were no answers. This happens a lot for me.

[Jonathan_H@adobeforums.com]

Try splitting the Powerpoint file in 2 and converting that way and comnbining into one PDF in Acrobat.

Also try clearing out your temporary files

C:\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Local Settings\Temp

Can you convert the last page on it's own?

What operating system are you usng?

[jamesrome@adobeforums.com]

XP Pro. I have 1/2 TB of disk space, so the temp files should be not an issue. I shouldn't have to split a file to get it to convert. Why doesn't acrobat use more of my available memory?

I tried opening the powerpoint on my laptop using OpenOffice 1.1. It converted it to PDF in about 10 seconds with no problems on a slow machine with little memory.

Why should we pay a fortune for Acrobat only to run into problems? Perhaps Adobe should crank back on the features of the product and fix the fundamentals?

[W_T_Allen@adobeforums.com]

so the temp files should be not an issue




Disk space doesn't matter, there is a finite number of files that can be in that directory.

[Jonathan_H@adobeforums.com]

I have 1/2 TB of disk space, so the temp files should be not an issue




That is a wrong. In Windows you are limited to 65,000 files in any given folder. The size of the folder I mentioned in my fist post is set by the operating system (tho you can change it of course). If you do not carry out regular maintanance on your computer then it is very possible that this folder has become full - either in terms fo the number of files or the size.

So what happens if you delete all your temporary files?

[jamesrome@adobeforums.com]

I have less than 100 files in my temp folder, so that should not be a problem. There was a temp.pdf file there that is 3.5 MB (bigger than the original file).

I tried to open it. Acrobat Pro said it was damaged and it would repair it. Then it crashed! 0 memory reference:
EAX = 0257C000 EBX = 00000000
ECX = 00AF5911 EDX = 0012A628
ESI = 02578D68 EDI = 0012A6EF
EIP = 00416EBE ESP = 0012A5C0
EBP = 0012A5E4 EFL = 00000203 CS = 001B
DS = 0023 ES = 0023 SS = 0023 FS = 003B
GS = 0000 OV=0 UP=0 EI=1 PL=0 ZR=0 AC=0
PE=0 CY=1

0257C000 = ??

ST0 = +0.00000000000000000e+0000
ST1 = -0.00000365255183292e+4641
ST2 = +0.00000000000000000e+0000
ST3 = +0.00000000000000000e+0000
ST4 = +0.00000000000000000e+0000
ST5 = -0.00000000000403013e+2466
ST6 = -0.00126464968358441e+2466
ST7 = +0.00000000000000000e+0000
CTRL = 027F STAT = 0123 TAGS = FFFF
EIP = 0405E27C CS = 001B DS = 0023
EDO = 01CB4280

ACROBAT! 00416ebe()
ACROBAT! 0068644b()
ACROBAT! 0067cc29()
ACROBAT! 0067ca5c()
ACROBAT! 0067c58f()
ACROBAT! 0067b3f6()
ACROBAT! 0067afed()
ACROBAT! 006bc539()
ACROBAT! 006bcc2c()
ACROBAT! 004f16f5()
ACROBAT! 004f3601()
ACROBAT! 004f39ba()
CATALOG! 22810384()
SEARCH! 2a321f73()
ACROFORM! 208815fc()
EBOOK! 2680b70a()
ACROBAT! 004f429e()
ACROBAT! 004f425a()
ACROBAT! 004b00f2()
ACROBAT! 00407e80()
ACROBAT! 0098a451()
KERNEL32! 77e814c7()

This is really a bug.

[Jonathan_H@adobeforums.com]

This is really a bug




I don't think so. I am quite sure tha if you had Powerpoint on your laptop you would be able to convert it no problem. Therefore this is not a bug.

I shall ask my querstion again:
So what happens if you delete all your temporary files?

Rather than saying this "should" not be a problem it is a better idea to rule it out so you can say with confidence that it is NOT a problem.

[jamesrome@adobeforums.com]

0 memory referneces are always bugs.

I deleted all the temp files it woukld let me delete.

Now the pdfmaker icon keeps saying that it needs to save the powerpoint file (which I say yes to), but then nothing happens.

So I restarted PowerPoint and tried the PDFMaker icon again. I also removed the background image from the master slide.

I just went to lunch, and as I walked back in the room, I got a popup saying "Adobe PDF printer failed to create the PDF file. That is after 30 minutes.

[jamesrome@adobeforums.com]

The log file said:
%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[Page: 1]%%
%%[Page: 2]%%
%%[Page: 3]%%
%%[Page: 4]%%
%%[Page: 5]%%
%%[Page: 6]%%
%%[Page: 7]%%
%%[Page: 8]%%
%%[Page: 9]%%
%%[Page: 10]%%
%%[Page: 11]%%
%%[Page: 12]%%
%%[Page: 13]%%
%%[Page: 14]%%
%%[ Error: limitcheck; OffendingCommand: imageDistiller ]%%

Stack:
-dict-

%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

[Ian_Burton@home_in_Paris.fr]

An off-the-wall suggestion. Change the properties of the Adobe PDF printer to Start Printing after the last page has been spooled. This is in Start>Settings>Printers. Select the Adobe PDF printer, and then File>Properties. In the Advanced TAB select spooling and the option indicate above and NOT Start Printing Immediately.

Powerpoint has rather strange file structures that offers interfacing difficulties for a lot of applications. One of the difficulties is the background graphics that are stored once in Powerpoint but are repeated page for page in print operations out of Powerpoint. It just could be that completing a Postscript file after Distiller has started converting it to PDF may provoke difficulties.

If this off-the-wall suggestion does not improve things, I would try setting the Adobe PDF printer to print to file, and then opening the Distiller application and converting the Postscript to PDF with suitably selected job options.
Hope this helps someone.
Cheers
Ian

[de_Siem@adobeforums.com]

Tis a 'bug' alright, a bug with that particular document and to be more specific a 'bug' with an image in the document.

First how exactly are you creating the pdf document?
I assume you are using the icon. Don't do that. try the following instead:
Go to file>print
select print to file
click on properties and make sure 'do not send fonts...' has been DEselected, then click okay.
Click ok in the main print dialog.
Give the prn file a name and save it to the desktop.
Launch the application distiller via start>programs
choose standard or press as a joboption
drag and drop the prn file ovr the distiller window to create the pdf.

If it still fails with the same error, create a new PPT file and try to convert that to see if it works. If it does then it will be time to troubleshoot your document.

Troubleshoot images on the masterpage first, especially those images that are transparent. The try the document again using the above method. If it still fails move on to the main document page 10 and onwards.
---general tip for all office applications, do not scale your images in Office, but import them at the correct size. T'is how the pro's do it as well.

[jamesrome@adobeforums.com]

OpenOffice has NO problems making a PDF with this document in about 10 seconds. I did not make the presentation, but needed to mail it in a smaller format.