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RWA_NJ
New Participant
April 2, 2025
Answered

Outlook freezes when converting email to PDF

  • April 2, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1787 views

I have a user in my work environment, as well as my own work laptop, that experiences Outlook freezing randomly and infrequently when attempting to convert an email to PDF. The issue does not happen every time, but there is no indication on what is causing it. I've been able to test converting a single email 20+ times without issue, and then attempt it again shortly after a small break, and then it will just lock up on the conversion window and then force close/reopen Outlook. There's no consistency with what kind of emails and attachments, as this can happen with any email. I've tried looking up this issue, and have read suggestiosn regarding adjusting indexing and other settings in Outlook under conversion settings, but none of these resolve the issue. Disabling the PDFMaker addin is also not an option, as that just completely removes the option to convert an email. 

 

These events do register in Event Viewer, however they are generic with Event ID of 1000, and just simply reference Outlook.exe as the faulting application, and no other information. Any additional insight would be appreciated, as I've already scrubbed through many Microsoft and Adobe forums relating to this and similar events, but have yet to find the magical combination of settings that would resolve this issue.

Correct answer alpha_tonic7509

I was having the same issue and i found a solution. I tried many different things and was close to reinstall office but then i simply stopped the printing service (print spooler) which is set to automatic in the services.msc and it works again.

3 replies

A
alpha_tonic7509Correct answer
New Participant
November 6, 2025

I was having the same issue and i found a solution. I tried many different things and was close to reinstall office but then i simply stopped the printing service (print spooler) which is set to automatic in the services.msc and it works again.

AnandSri
Community Manager
AnandSriCommunity Manager
Community Manager
November 10, 2025

Hello @alpha_tonic7509

 

I hope you are doing well, and thank you for sharing the step that worked for you. This may help other users experiencing a similar issue. Please feel free to reach out if you need any assistance.

 

Regards,

Anand Sri.

A
albert_4322
New Participant
June 21, 2025

It is like a classic intermittent issue frustrating and hard to pin down. Maybe worth testing with a different PDF printer like CutePDF or using Outlook's "Print to PDF" as a workaround to see if the crash still happens 

[Third party link removed from the post by Adobe moderator]

creative explorer
creative explorer
Community Expert
April 3, 2025

@RWA_NJ I am wondering if it is a corrupted Outlook profile? Maybe, create a new Outlook profile and test the PDF conversion. If solves it, then you know it's a corrupted Outlook profile!

m
R
RWA_NJAuthor
New Participant
April 3, 2025

No luck on mine in testing after setting up a new mail profile. My user just got a new laptop last week, so their Outlook profile is already fairly new.

AnandSri
Community Manager
AnandSriCommunity Manager
Community Manager
April 3, 2025

Hello!

 

I hope you are doing well.

 

Does Outlook freeze when converting any specific email, or is it with all the emails? Ensure both Adobe Acrobat (25.001.2043x Optional update, Mar 19, 2025) and Microsoft Outlook are updated to their latest versions. 

Modify PDFMaker Settings: In Outlook, navigate to the Acrobat tab. Click on Change Conversion Settings. Uncheck options  Embed Index and any other non-essential features, and try converting the email to PDF.

Repair Acrobat Installation (Windows only): Corrupted installation files can cause a freeze. To repair: Open Acrobat. Go to Help > Repair Installation. Follow the on-screen instructions and restart your computer.

Check Add-ins: Disable other Outlook add-ins temporarily to see if they are conflicting with the Adobe PDFMaker add-in. 

 

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

 

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