Acrobat and Windows Terminal Services

Ladies & Gents,

I have come up with my solution. Adobe is no help and it seems that this problem has been a "feature" of the software for quite a few versions now.

I bit the bullet and have bought another software package that acts as a printer to create pdf's - note; it doesn't allow reading/editing them post print (some editing can be done during the print), but for that I will still use my otherwise useless Adobe Acrobat v6.

My software choice was the standard version of pdfFactory (http://www.pdffactory.com/products/pdffactory/index.html). This one was the cheapest of the different titles I found that worked, but also had the most features. The line in product features list; "Easy server deployment: Install on a server as a shared printer for easy group or enterprise deployment", near literally brought a tear to my eye.

Now in the aim of providing a non-biased choice for you all, there are some other software systems out there that also worked; Jaws pdf Creator (http://www.jawspdf.com/pdf_creator/features.html) & pdf-Xchange (http://www.docu-track.com/index.php?page=22) to list 2. CutePDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp) supposedly also works (I didn't try it myself), and is free - but you must also install ghostscript for the software to work, which I was not keen to do.

To summise, this software now allows me to print pdf's via Windows Terminal Services (on a Server 2003 machine) when connected either over a LAN or the internet via remote desktop or TS Web Connection - WITHOUT having to have the Administrator logged on locally to the Server. You will still need to keep Acrobat installed to edit and view the created pdf's however, unless you choose one of the more expensive software versions (I say expensive, but all are still much cheaper than Acrobat itself).

Good luck all - and please Adobe (if you read this), fix the problem.......

Ben

We were having the exact same problem. I've solved the problem by creating an user with autologon. If there is running an admin-session on the console - printing pdfs over terminal services will be no problem. I think there is an problem with the local LPT-Port...
chris

Ummm... just a quick queston regarding your WTS installations? Are you running your server as Application Server? If not why don't you try doing that and then install Acrobat. I believe that is a requirement of running Acrobat on a WTS Win 2k installation scenario. If you already have Acrobat installed you will need to uninstall, then activate the Application Server in the Add/Remove Programs control panel and then reinstall Acrobat. If that doesn't work, you have to know that you are running outside of the system requirements (that is ... if you read the White Paper before trying this) and by doing so it is "at your own risk" at that point.

Rocky

Sorry let me clarify for the more witting users; a shame they don't put advice or comments about the issue anywhere but in the final line of a 6 page White Paper. Shame they don't put it on the box or notify customers when they call up the help line looking for advice BEFORE wasting money on needlessly upgrading software.

Not for us unfortunatey - we installed it as Admin, locally on the Server.

Shame there still seems to be no comments from ADobe, or advice.

Ben

We were having the exact same problem. We had originally installed the software from within a terminal session. Reinstalling the software from the console alleviated the problem.

Hope this helps...

I agree, this is a BIG problem. So I am responsible for purchasing multiple copies...fine, but I should be able to get this to work. I admit I am no huge company, but with a student PC lab and 15 staff, working around this by installing on local machines is not acceptable. I need to allow them to create pdf's from the terminal server. Please take a look at this adobe.

We are running 6.01, which we were told addressed the requirement to have the console logged in all the time... but we still have frustrating issues.

PDF creation jobs appear in the printer queue - but from time to time they get stuck. The spooler service needs to be stop and restarted, and then maybe we get a few more PDF's created before it gets stuck once again.

The problem is driving us crazy, and we are most likely about to buy one of the third party PDF creators that work fine.

To create a pdf on WTS or Citrix first thing to make sure of is that there's an admin session running on the server machine.

If you have the choice, choose to deploy Acrobat across the network rather than running it from the server though.

I had to install PDF995 and now I can create pdf in my terminal server. I had to do this so people can work. They can not do work properly with Acrobat at all...

Wy Adobe is doing like this I can´t understand. They proberly doesn´t talk to the user´s of Adobe product´s

A´m I wrong or a´m I wrong?