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Participant
December 12, 2019
Question

Exporting to PDF suddenly not working

  • December 12, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 208 views

I have a file that I've worked with for about 6 months. No problems. I was updating it today (saved as new file name) all was good. Saved it as pdf so I could print my draft with crop marks etc. Printed, all good. Suddenly I started getting an background task error. And when I try to open the pdf, I get message that Acrobat can't open the file because it's not a supported file type, yada yada yada. I even went back to an old indd file that I'm not working on and get the same messages.

 

I discovered that with my renewal I now have InDesign 2020 and InDesign 2019 on my computer so I thought maybe somehow my files were getting crossed with software versions, so I've made a copy and opened one with 2019 and one with 2020. With each, now when I export to pdf the pdf file comes up as file size 0.

 

Does anyone have any ideas or guidance for me? I'll try calling support in the morning, but I've scheduled to go to print by end of day tomorrow. What in the world happend between 3pm and 4pm today? What did I do wrong?

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3 replies

Participant
December 12, 2019

Sorry. I'm in Windows. And I did mean Export.

I've made some progress. I at least got a pdf I can use for now. I discovered that when my membership renewed (my account is through auniversity, and the renewal happened automatically) it put Adobe CC 2020 on  my computer. But 2019 is still there too. It seems that that is creating the problem. I made copies of the file and named one -2019 and one -2020. When I tried opening the 2019 it had to have it convert back to 2019 version. Did that and had same problems. The 2020 one I've had some success, but things are still all confused and quirky. I need to find a way to clean it up so I can get back to having it all work seemlessly again.

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 12, 2019

What do you mean "confused and quirky"?

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 12, 2019

When you state "Saved it as a PDF", I assume you mean you Exported it. Did you choose one of the Presets such as PDF/X-4?

Try saving a copy of your InDesign document as an IDML document, which may clear out a corruption, and see if you can export that to PDF succesfully.

Geоrge
Legend
December 12, 2019

You're don't say your OS. If your OS is Windows then try not an export, do print to the Adobe PDF printer (don't forget to do High Quality Print preset in your printer and in InDesign as default). It save your time for today task. 

Remember, never say you can't do something in InDesign, it's always just a question of finding the right workaround to get the job done. © David Blatner