"Failed to Export PDF"

Hi Not sure if you have resolved this yet. I recently installed the most up to date version, after struggling with this for a long time I figured out that it was the image links. For some reason, Id isn't showing the missing links in the Links panel. (when saving the file to a new location) I had to relink all my images and then export them as a PDF again. It's working now. After a couple of small heart attacks. 

I have trouble exporting to PDF with the 15.1.1 version. It won't let me export to anything but PDF X-4.

Dear Adobe Team,

in multiple projects I have similar problems like those described in this threat. I read the replies thoroughly and tried all your suggestions. Some problems could be solved after time consuming try and error approaches. However, some problems could not be tackled.

Currently my problem is that I can export the PDF uncompressed but it is not possible to export it without downscaling. Ironically, it doesn't even work when I reduce the image sizes in Photoshop below the limit for downscaling (450 dpi to 300 dpi).

Here are my system specifications:
Adobe InDesign 14.0.3
macOs Sierra 10.12.6
I usually work on a NAS but the problems are similar when saving the files to Desktop.
All my documents are complex, have more than 50 pages and contain numerous images.

The PDF-export always fails at 99%, where it usually stays for more than 5 minutes before the alert is shown.
As already mentioned, this happens in different projects that are not comparable by content or structure.

In preceiding cases, I could solve the problem by deleting Preferences and / or using the IDML Export.

Your suggestions to split the document to find the corrupted page did never lead to success:
in one case pages 1-20 and 70-112 could be exported separately but not together as 1-20,70-112.
In the same file 20-25, 25-30, 1-28, 27-30 worked but not 20-30.
You can imagine how time consuming these useless tests have been.

I don't see how this "corruption" could be caused by the user.
If yes, I would wonder why the software allows it?
As mentioned before, very often deleting the Preferences was the fix – but unfortunately not always.

As this threat is almost 2 years old but has been updated frequently eversince, I would like to know which sustainable solutions you can offer?

Please don't refer to the next version of InDesign or different Hardware, OS etc. If your products just work on brand new computers and operating systems you should mention this as the first sentence on the product website... 

As far as I am informed, Adobe CC is a tool set for professional use and you expect customers to pay significant fees. As you do not offer services without payment, I wonder why customers need to spend unpaid hours on trouble-shooting?

I hope for your understanding that it is no option to send over complex projects each time your software does not work as it should.

I would be grateful for explanations why these problems occur and / or how to avoid them.

I would like to emphasize that I don't intend to attack any of you personally. As you can guess, I am more than disappointed by the declining performance of your products. I have been a customer for years and rarely had problems. Unfortunately, this has changed.

Thanks a lot and best wishes.

WHAT WORKED FOR ME !!!!!!!
I downscaled any large images to were in document. Downscaled to minimum that images were shown in high res but not linked as large size.
I had images/psd that were over the 100mb - The moment i downscaled them - i could save them as pdf without errors

I had a 16-pg InDesign doc that I had copied from another file. I went through and re-linked all the images (where ID had red-lined my missing links). All seemed to be in order. No errors, but of the 16 pages, there were 7 that I could not export to PDF. All the others were good. Not sure if this solves other problems, but I finally went through every image on the ID doc and re-linked them to the image on my desktop (not Dropbox). It look forever, but it worked. 

Not to be contrarian, but I don't have a clue as to how I might go about locating "any document corruption" in order to remove it. Exporting to IDML reopening and reexporting throws the exact same (very unhelpful) error message: "the PDF failed to export." Well, duh, it doesn't take a PhD in programming to know that. Can Adobe not give us more explicit error messages. 

And for the record, a PDF/X-4 is useless when I have a very specific requirement from my printer. 

Having the same problem. Indesign refuses to make a pdf file. I have a 800 book and a tight deadline. I just realized that typesetting is the worst job in the world. Its boring and highly stressful at the same time.

I realize this is a year later lol but I had the same issue with a file.

I was finally able to save it using the "standard" dropdown box, which I normally don't use. For some reason that worked for me!

I don't know if this helps anyone else, but my issue came down to a linked pdf that had bad characters in the filename, like # and ( ). Once I changed the filename, it resolved.

I had the same issue and none of these solutions were working.... I ended up exporting by page increments until I found which page was corrupt. I deleted the page and I haven't had problems since!