How to fix broken "Print to AdobePDF" ?

[StephenB427]

Until the last few weeks, from about a year ago with Adobe Acrobat Pro XI on a Win7 Pro 64-bit system, I've been able to "Print to AdobePDF" as a printer (versus "Save As AdobePDF" which continues to work as expected in MS Word 2010, etc.). I registered my product October 8, 2012 and for most of the year everything has worked great!

As others with this problem have described, the Print To AdobePDF (Adobe PDF Converter) seems to be progressing (there is a progress bar on screen) and then it stops with no output at all rather than the old/usual way of opening Acrobat with the new document on-screen).

I have uninstalled/installed the Adobe PDF "printer" (remove device and add a printer) many times drilling down to the proper *.inf file starting with "Use an existing port" for Adobe PDF, Have Disk, browse to AdobePDF.inf, and then use the sixth down Adobe PDF Converter. I have also deleted infcache.1 following another suggested solution and then, yesterday, I uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat XI Pro with a registry cleaning between uninstalling and reinstalling with jv16 Power Tools. Alas I've been unsuccessful in fixing the problem.

Right now I'm at a complete loss what to try next to fix the broken "Print to AdobePDF". I'd really appreciate any suggestions. Many thanks.

Cheers, Stephen

[Somya]

Thanks BCuzzillo. We are looking for a PS printer on the machine where issue exists.

[BCuzzillo]

Somya,

Here is a screenshot of my printer inventory. None are PS printers.

[Somya]

Other way to identify is by following these steps:

1) In print panel , from the printer drop down list, choose "Print to File" option.

This option is present at the bottom of the list.

2) Click on Print button.

If the default save as extension in the "Save Dialog" box is ".ps" then it is PS printer.

In case it is ".prn", the printer is PCL.

[CHPollock1]

Soyma, none of mine appear to be PS.   I have had PS printers in the past, however, that have since been deleted.  Could it be possible that there are PS remnants in the registry?

[dave-oz]

I don't know if this will help you, but I recently experienced the inability to print to adobe acrobat after an update to IE 11.

Very frustrated try to get it to work and tried everything I could find on the web to no avail including everything in this forum.

For me I just solved the problem, note I am using an earlier version of Acrobat Pro.

I was trying to get rid of a toolbar that had been loaded onto my system when I noticed there is an acrobat toolbar available but not selected.

I selected the toolbar and hey presto I could now print to Acrobat. Turned the toolbar back off and could now still print to acrobat.

Not sure why but enabling the toolbar must have loaded something that enables the Adobe printer to work.

Would be interested to know if it works for you.

Regards

[CHPollock1]

Thanks for the idea.  Didn't make a difference for me, however. Furthermore, the "convert to PDF" dialog hangs as well in some background process.  If I start a second conversion, the dialog shows it waiting for the first one. IE 11 and Acrobat Pro XI on Win 8.1 64bit.

[BCuzzillo]

Somya,

I checked mine using the method you specified, and I don't have any PS printers. (And never did.)

[Test Screen Name]

I know nothing about this problem, but I can say that (a) in my experience, PostScript printers also give PRN files, that isn't a valid test (unless it changed in Windows), (b) the screen shot in message 73 shows multiple PS printers. Most, perhaps not all, PDF generating drivers are PS.

And I wonder if this is relevant. Is anyone getting this who has NO other PDF printers installed?

[CHPollock1]

Thanks for the idea.  When I read it I thought this was it for sure.  Although my Adobe PDF printer did not have the "print" security control checked for Creator Owner, checking it didn't solve my problem.   I also went into special permissions and gave Creator Owner "full control".  "Everyone" (and all others on the security list" has print checked now.  No change for me (even after rebooting, which didn't seem necessary, but tried anyway).

[BCuzzillo]

After the 11.0.0.8 update that came today, I noticed that the one application that it can print from successfully is Acrobat itself. I don't know if that was always true. This could be a clue.

[moto_man]

One more wrinkle:  I also have an old installation of Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, worked for years right up until I updated to IE11 and I did some Windows Update..too many changes at once to isolate.  Here is my wrinkle:  At computer bootup I now get an Acrodist.exe error dialog box:

I hit "OK" and it closes.  Now, interestingly, I can subsequently launch Acrodist.exe and it WILL launch without error!  However, when I try to "Print to PDF" from within any application, I get a similar but different error dialog box as follows:

The memory location is different.   The symptoms I experience are similar to everyone else's after I hit "OK" here:  The printing dialogue launches and the blue progress bar appears but then hangs. 

[Test Screen Name]

I know nothing about the specific issue but it may be worth mentioning this. The numbers are almost certainly Windows error codes. 0x0142 is ERROR_DEVICE_NO_RESOURCES "The target device has insufficient resources to complete the operation" while 0x0005 is ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED "Access is denied."

Of the two the access denied is the more accessible. Could be that the permissions on its folder or a temporary folder have changed. It could be complex, need not be access to files.

[moto_man]

Thanks for the information, but unfortunately I am not very good at finding needles in haystacks!    I do not have the programming expertise to troubleshoot using the Windows errors, I can only report them.

One more thing:  I also tried to "add printer" as described in this thread, and I was able to add the "Adobe PDF Converter" printer (picked the 5th and then the 6th from the list of identically named printers).  When I attempt to print to that printer, I do NOT get the pop-up error dialog box.  Instead, the computer seems to "go through the motions" of printing, but no PDF is actually produced.

Here is some weird detail on this:  When I try and print, I get the normal "Save As" dialog box, with a strangely pre-populated file name for the printout (looks like random letters and numbers i.e. "9WOIUC9B.pdf" ).  I select "Save" and then.... the activity just fades away...nothing appears, no PDF created.  HOWEVER---- when I go to "Recent Items" using the Windows 7 start button the PDF is LISTED AS IF it was created.  When I select it from the recent items list, I then get a dialog box that says the file cannot be found and inviting me to search for it.  Of course it is not there.  If I hover my mouse over the recent items listing, it shows me the location where the file was "saved" per the dialog box, but the file is not there!

[Perquadesign]

Having the same issue here, recently updated to the latest acrobat pro XI. Before that I didn't have any issues. I have been in touch with more than 4 different Adobe customer service agents and all the above didn't fix my problem. I have permission, deleted files, cleaned registry, repaired, rebooted everything. I have now downloaded a 3rd party PDF creator which works like a charm. Too bad this cost me over 3 hours with no result while it worked in the past.

[MWJ]

Hello, friends!

I read this whole thread yesterday after finding it by Googling "Why won't my Adobe PDF printer work" after installation of Acro Pro XI.  I found it highly discouraging that this was a thread that started a YEAR ago.

I also have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.  Anyway, I tried the solution on the first page of this question about choosing a different printer converter and I renamed it with that line number, so I could keep track.  Then I closed down my computer in frustration last night.  This morning I booted up, opened Firefox to start testing again, and there was an Add-On called Adobe PDF Creation so I downloaded that. 

The Adobe PDF printer is now working fine.  One of my test files from yesterday is actually there, and I created it before I started the whole thing with the different PDF converters.  The only difference there was that I went through and did the whole CREATOR OWNER permissions.  Now I am showing there is another Acrobat update.  Dare I try it?  What if it screws up what is finally working?

[Guest]

Hi Stephen,

I am having the same problem and have tried many of the things you have.  Have you found a solution yet? 

Does anyone at Adobe have a solution for this?  It is incredibly annoying!!

Thanks,

Tony

[WTFOver]

I have Win7Ultimate 64 Bit and run Adobe Acrobat 10 Pro. When I printed to my "Adobe PDF" printer to create pdf documents the jobs would hang and eventually error on the print queue. To fix this I did the following:

Opened Acrobat (with no documents open)

Selected "Help" from the main tool bar

In the drop down I selected "Repair Acrobat Installation"

It took a little time to run the repair but it was all automated

Once the repair was done I rebooted as recommended.

After the reboot all worked fine again.

YMMV

[erniemansour@nc.rr.com]

I've had this same problem and believe it started when I upgraded to Windows 8.1 64 bit.  Also, I believe it could be related to a corrupt user profile.  Mine is "corrupt" and won't allow me to use Windows Media Player/Center.  I have to log on as another user to print to pdf or use Media Player.  I've read what it takes to "fix" a corrupt user profile, but would rather just do a complete Windows installation.  I will let you know how this works for this problem.  Hope this helps someone.

[mok2000]

I can't prove this, but I've done a system restore prior to a Windows 7 Security update (KB3011780).  No more problem printing.  I updated with the windows update and bam! couldn't print pdf documents.  I again did a system restore prior to the security update, and I can once again print pdf docs.  If you try it, and this works, please let me know because I am reluctant to update windows again until I know that this isn't the problem.

[stephent57882001]

I have the same problem.

New Dell 7440 laptop, Win 7 (64 bit), Office 2013, Adobe XI Pro (11.0.10).

I cannot print to PDF (printing error).

I've been surviving using this end around: Save as PDF, which has undesirable results.

I have not yet tried these last 2 solutions (LaurieAnn & mok2000), but will do that shortly.

In the interim, I thought I should share what I discovered today.

1/ I cannot print to a PDF file on our work server.

2/ When I try to print to my C drive, I get a security error (You don't have permission...)

3/ When I change the location to my personal "Users" directory (as suggested by the error message), everything works perfectly.

WTH!

Must be a security issue of some sort?

[stephent57882001]

PROBLEM SOLVED !

Thank you LaurieAnne 🙂

What a shame that nobody from Adobe was able to direct folks to this "Patch" previously (See LaurieAnne's instructions above).

I'm also disappointed that my Adobe XI Pro software didn't pick up on the fact that there was an update/patch available.

This wasted a couple afternoons of my time trying to find a solution.

Regardless, Very Happy Now!

Cheers, ST

[Dov Isaacs]

A few possible issues.

(1) If you can successfully create PDF via the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance to some locations, but not others, it implies that the file and directory security settings are setup such that you are restricted as to where you can create, modify, and/or delete files and directories. Out of the box, most Windows systems give the user by default Administrator privileges on your local system. It may be that however your system was setup, you were granted much more restricted access and that many system areas on your system were protected against your access and/or modification.

(2) Office 2013 has a fairly poor “Save as PDF” feature built in. But if you have Acrobat installed, you should also have access to the “Create Adobe PDF” and/or “Save as Adobe PDF” which Acrobat adds to Office. Such PDF is much higher quality than Microsoft's built in PDF and even the printing to PDF via the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance, preserving colors and live transparency. However, you might encounter similar permissions issues depending upon where in your file system you are attempting to create the PDF file.

          - Dov

[stephent57882001]

Thanks Dov,

Your comments are very rational and I was going down that path of reasoning myself before I tried LaurieAnne's solution.

We have several PC's in our office that were all similarly blocked from printing to PDF's.

I've just implemented the Adobe patch on 4 of them and they all work now.

Thank you LaurieAnn!

Cheers, Steve

[Dov Isaacs]

Exactly which of the LaurieAnn fixes worked for you?!?!

Her fixes were for much older versions of Acrobat, such as 8 and 9.

You had 11.0.10 installed, the latest version with the latest patches. We did not issue any subsequent updates. Thus, it would be interested to know exactly what fixed the problems!  

          - Dov

[stephent57882001]

Au contraire Dov 🙂

LaurieAnn only proposes 1 solution (remove the Adobe PDF printer, download and install the patch).

Furthermore, as her instructions suggest, the Adobe ftp site has patches for a variety of operating systems and Acrobat versions.  I was pleasantly surprised by the comprehensive and up to date options, and how easy the patch is to install.

if you don't believe me, try it for yourself...

Cheers, Steve