Participant

Question

Adobe Acrobat Pro and DC Pro - converting large PDF files to JPEG

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
July 13, 2020
6 replies
1059 views

Service Request 6000

Can Acrobat DC Pro convert a 12.5 GB multi-page PDF to JPEG without hitting the 10 GB file size limit? I can't save this huge file to any network or local drive location because standard Pro locks up - "too big for current action."

Crash or freeze

This topic has been closed for replies.

ls_rbls

Community Expert

See also the suggestion offered to another user with same (or similar issue) : https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/re-saving-error-quot-this-file-cannot-be-saved-this-file-is-too-big-for-the-current-operation-quot/td-p/9774192?page=1

J

JOCinKCAuthor

Participant

SHAZAAM!! Thanks to all who replied with various suggestions and perspectives. Thanks to ls__rbls for a referral of a similar situation (from AnandSri) and a resolution: Disable the "Save as optimizes for fast web view." Don't know how it works, but the apparant road block to simply saving the large file is removed. Everything works fine now, to combine 4115 individual PDF's into a multi-page PDF, and then save to a network archival file storage location. Now, to learn about that feature and understand what happen. Thanks again.

ls_rbls

Community Expert

As mentioned by Test_Screen_Name "The individual JPEG files should not be very large, whatever the source file size."

So, I believe that we all missed to ask you a few more important questions:

I can create this file, but cannot Save it to anywhere. "Too big for current Action" is the message. I do have enough storage space on the network drive. Even breaking the file up into smaller chunks still results in this odd Too Big message.

How much storage do you have exactly on the network drive? And what type of network share is this drive?

Is this a mapped drive pointing to a USB mass storage device attached to another computer? Or is it actually pointing to shared folder (instead of an actual external hard drive) of another user in the C:\ drive of that computer (if using MS Windows)?

Is it a solid state drive that was recently installed in that computer that is sharing access to this drive?

If yes, what operating system is running in that computer with the shared drive?

Please also indicate what is the file system type used in the partition(s) of the drive(s) that you're trying to save this file to:

exFAT ?
NTFS ?
FAT32?

I know that even the simple act of saving a file to anywhere creates a lot of background CPU work, such a file replicating, etc.

Not really and not necessarily it has to replicate anything. But you're right if what you're referring to is that tasks are usually managed by the operating system in a temporary cache or folder until the tasks complete. Sometimes these temporary folders get cluttered and need to be manually emptied, as well as defragmenting your hard drive at least once every six months, and checking for the latest hardware drivers; in your particular case, the hard drive and the shared drive drivers.

I may not have enough RAM on this local disked PC to handle the temporary glut of data for the Save function. My knowledge of Windows and PC architecture is limited, so I'm thrashing around for a simple solution.

I will assume that you're using MS Windows 10, but from what you're describing looks more like you're still using an older version of MS Windows in both of your computer and the computer that is providing the network share.

Since I joined the forums last year, I've been using 10 year old computers with less than 1.8 GHz CPU and 8GB of RAM.

I had the opportunity of helping a user that had a PDF document with 300 pages; most of the pages where scanned photographs. I personally tested splitting the file in groups of no less than 60 pages and no more than 80 at a time in my old crappo computer, and the file reduction time was no less than 3 minutes and no more than 5 minutes.

The computer that I tested this monster document on was using MS Windows 7 Home Edition, running in a PC with an 1.5 GHz AMD processor (very slow compared to an Intel processor equivalent), and 6 GB of unganged RAM (each memory stick had different clocking speeds ; not the ideal setup ). My hard drive was only 500GB's capacity and multiple partitions on it.

My Adobe Acrobat Pro DC was installed on the C:\ drive partition, which at the time of this test, I only had that partition dedicated for my OS with no more than 150 GBs for MS Windows and for all of the programs that I was using.

The rest of the drive's capacity I dedicated it as storage areas by splitting it in separate partitions, such as a D:\ drive (logical) partition just for pictures and videos, for example.

However, my file system was formatted as NTFS for all my partitions.

This made a big difference on my hard drive's performance compared to how MS Windows 7 used to perform when I had it using a FAT32 file system (more robust, secure, and less prone to disk fragmentation issues).

My latest attempt is to simply convert this monster PDF to JPEG in a desparate attempt to reduce the overall file size. So far, I haven't found the way to do that. That choice does not appear, so third party software may be the answer.

As Test_Screen_Name suggested earlier, Acrobat should be able to handle the conversion from PDF to JPEG if you break the file in smaller chunks.

I don't think there's a real need for third party software because the error you're getting seems more related to the file system structure of you local drive and/or the network share.

Indirectly you can also try and improve performance by increasing the SWAP area of the hard drive (or eliminating it completely and opt to use no caching at all if you have plenty of fast RAM).

This sometimes forces to use the full capcity of the physical RAM in your system rather than overwhelming the operating system with writing to and retrieving data from the SWAP area of the hard drive.

But as I read outside of this forum, you should verify if the partitions of the drives that you're trying to save this file to are formatted as NTFS file system or exFAT, not FAT32.

To proove if this is true, get a USB stick larger than 32 GBs and format it as NTFS. Then try to save that file on it.

If it works you will need to consider backing up all of your data and re-formatting the storage drives with an NTFS file system (preferably).

If this is not the issue, or this suggestion doesn't work, then disregard everything I've said here.

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

I don't have any experience converting microfilm, but it sounds interesting.

As a work-around, I would try creating a one page InDesign file and using a script* to automatically place a group of the pages from the original PDF, (say 412 pages in 10 separate files). If this works, you can export to new PDFs from InDesign, then optimize and combine as needed from Acrobat. From InDesign, go to Window> Utilities> Scripts> Samples> Javascript> MultiPageImporter.jsx> (fly-out-menu)> Run script.

*InDesign ships with a place multipage PDF script, but there is a better one you can download here (ID-MultiPageImporter-2.6 2):

https://indesignsecrets.com/placing-all-the-pages-of-a-pdf-inside-indesign.php

Quit InDesign and drop the script into the scripts folder in the InDesign application.

This script will allow you to select which PDF pages to import into InDesign.

I would also quit all other applications and restart my computer before trying this.

Also, I assume you tried to copy this PDF (not save to) to your hard drive before trying to split it into sections?

try67

Community Expert

It sounds like you're trying to do it on the cloud, not on the local computer.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

"Service Request 6000" What does this mean, please?

When do you get this message? What is the exact text?

The individual JPEG files should not be very large, whatever the source file size.

J

JOCinKCAuthor

Participant

Sorry, ignore the "Service Request 6000".

See above detailed explanation. I believe I should digitize this much raw data and export as JPEG to start with, and convert to PDF later, if the project standard will allow that. PDF has always been the handy default for my archival work, but this project is different - huge file sizes of raw freshly scanned images.

ls_rbls

Community Expert

What I've read here and outside of these forums is to split the document in smaller chunks to handle the file optimization and resizing. Then combine it to a single PDF.

What is weird is your observation about not able to save to a local drive.

Are you able to confirm if the location you're trying to save to have like a storage limit quota, or any other type of limiting restrictions?

J

JOCinKCAuthor

Participant

I've painted myself into a corner! I have a multi-page PDF file, having combined up to 4115 individual PDF images into one, at a finished size of 12.5 GB. That's big. This is a 16 mm roll film digitization project to archive old microfilm rolls.

I can create this file, but cannot Save it to anywhere. "Too big for current Action" is the message. I do have enough storage space on the network drive. Even breaking the file up into smaller chunks still results in this odd Too Big message.

I know that even the simple act of saving a file to anywhere creates a lot of background CPU work, such a file replicating, etc. I may not have enough RAM on this local disked PC to handle the temporary glut of data for the Save function. My knowledge of Windows and PC architecture is limited, so I'm thrashing around for a simple solution.

My latest attempt is to simply convert this monster PDF to JPEG in a desparate attempt to reduce the overall file size. So far, I haven't found the way to do that. That choice does not appear, so third party software may be the answer.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Is "too big for current action" the exact, complete message? Never seen it before, but given the exact words I might be able to find it. How about just using Extract pages instead? To pull out the first half or quarter or whatever, then repeat for more.

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