Problems converting Word documents to PDF

Report · Apr 13, 2007

I am having trouble converting Word documents to PDF files. Whenever I try to convert the file, I receive the following error message: Missing PDFMaker files. Do you want to run the installer in repair mode? When I run the installer in repair mode, I still receive the same message. I have Adobe Acobat Professional 8 and MS Office 2007 installed on my PC.

Report · Apr 13, 2007

Office 2007 is not yet supported. There are lots of threads about that so you should be able to search the forum and find the other postings.

I believe a few people said that they were able to print to the PDF printer but PDFMaker does not work.

Report · Apr 28, 2007

Hi CallieAnne & EDL,

Regrettably I beg to differ with you CallieAnne, Acrobat Professional 8 will convert your MS Office 2007 documents to Pdf (will at least with me it does), however, for some unexplicable situation Acrobat Professional 8 will not convert previous word documents (97-2003)causing the following prompt "Missing PDFMaker files". I checked Acrobat's Online support

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=329044

however, Adobe acknowledge that this problem "Missing PDFMaker file" relates to their earlier versions ie: Acrobat Professional 7.0 Acrobat Standard 7.0, but no comment about Version 8. I suspect in time there will be patch in due course.

An alternative to this situation of which Microsoft have been most helpful is to download their latest updates of their "addins" for your existing MS Office 2007, these updates are of course free if you hold a genuine license of their MS Office 2007 product. The Pdf converter can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en

When saving/converting to Pdf, left click on MS Icon top left, left click "Save as" then left click PDF or XPS and your away laughing. This addin will allow you under MS Office 2007 to save previous versions of MS word documents.

Hopes this helps.

Regards

Gruenen/Neuseeland

Report · Jun 21, 2007

I have a similar problem converting Word 2007 files to PDF using Acrobat Prof 8.1. I get the following error message from Acrobat:

"An unexpected error occurred. PDFMaker was unable to produce the Adobe PDF."

I have no problems with Excel 2007 or Powerpoint 2007. This problem only started once they released the Update patch for Acrobat 8 that integrated itself in the Office 2007 suite.

Report · Jul 03, 2007

I cannot convert the WORD 2003 document to PDF.
It tells me to correct the error, but does not tell what the error is ?!?!??!:

"PDF conversion process failed, please correct the error and retry."

Does anyone know what to do in this situation or what is causing the error?

Thanks and regards,

Andrei

Report · Jul 04, 2007

Hi Andrei,

Are you able to print to 'Adobe PDF' printer? Try follwing steps:
1)Open a very simple Word document with one line of text and press Ctrl+P.
2)Choose "Adobe PDF" Printer as the printer Name in printer dialog and press OK.
3)Save the PDF file to some location when prompted.

If a proper PDF file is created after (3) above then try to convert the Word file to PDF using PDFMaker(Adobe PDF->Convert to Adobe PDF).
If this is also working fine then probably there is something in your Word file that is causing the problem.

Report · Aug 08, 2007

I am having a similar problem. I get the message: "an unexpected error occured. PDFMaker was unable to produce the PDF." I have followed the steps from Mkashif, "Problems converting Word documents to PDF" #5, 5 Jul 2007 12:54 am Thank you! and succefully created a PDF. I still however cannot create a PDF from any of the other files on my computer (all of which are converted form Office 2003). Can anyone help?

Report · Aug 08, 2007

I don't see the problem at my end. Can you also provide the following info....

1) The message you are talking about is file specific or does it happen with every/any MS Word file (try creating a very simple new Word file with just a few lines of text and see if it works).
2) Would it be possible for you to share a file with which you are experiencing the problem. You can share the file on any of the free file sharing servers and send me the web link.
3) And also, are you able to create PDFs from Excel and PowerPoint.
4) What version of Acrobat are you using?

I've assumed that you are trying to convert your files to PDF using the "Adobe PDF" menu item (commonly known as 'Acrobat PDFMaker') in your MS Word application.

Report · Aug 09, 2007

The Message only appears when I am in Adobe Acrobat Standard 8.1.0 and I select "create PDF from file and them I select any Word Document on my computer. It does not happen with Excel or Outlook. Also, when I try to create a pdf from Word, I receive no error message and no pdf.
I can create new PDF's from new simple Word docs with one or two lines of text.
I am thinking that the problem lies somewhere in the file conversion from .doc to .docx
Here is an example docx file. Thank you very much for your help.
http://www.driveway.com/lhkxu61719

Report · Aug 10, 2007

I'm not able to download the docx file you have posted. I've already done all that hocus-pocus with its plug-in and 'Get edit widget' etc and have tried 3 different machines. Can you please share it at some other location.
I can't say what's the problem is until I see the file but it seems to be file specific. Does it happen with every doc file which is saved as docx.

See if a workaround works for the time being:
1) Launch Word 2007.
2) Open your file and click on 'Acrobat' menu.
3) Click on 'Create PDF' button under 'Acrobat' menu.
4) In the 'Save As' dialog box choose 'Quick and Simple' instead of 'Fully functional'.
5) Click 'save' and see if a PDF gets created.

Report · Aug 10, 2007

Since docx is the new default file format in Microsoft Word 2007 and this new format is not backwards compatible with previous versions of Microsoft Office convert it to .doc format. Then Open in Word 2007 and try creating PDF.

Report · Aug 11, 2007

Hi Robert,
Adobe Acrobat 8.1 supports PDFMaker for Office 2007 and its new file formats. Hence if Darius is using Word 2007 then he doesn't need to convert his docx files to doc or vice versa for using PDFMaker.
Though if he would have been using some older Acrobat version with Word 2007 then even converting the docx to doc wouldn't have helped because in that case PDFMaker won't be availabe in Word 2007. The only solution I see in that scenario is to print to Adobe PDF printer.

Report · Aug 12, 2007

Hi everyone,
I'm experiencing the same problem, that is,the following error message when converting MS Word document: Missing PDFMaker files. Do you want to run the installer in repair mode?

I'm using Office 2003 and Acrobat Professional 7.0.3

I've tried to download updates (7.0.5-7.0.9)but failed. I'm getting this message:"The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the windows installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a diffirent version of the program".

Shall appreciate a solution to this problem?
Regards,
MosMash

Report · Aug 13, 2007

Hi everyone,
This is MosMash,I forgot to tell you that it is still possible for me to create PDF files from excel document.
Does that tell you anything?
Thanks,
MosMash

Report · Aug 13, 2007

Your last message tells a lot....
Check if 'Adobe PDF' Menu is present when you launch Word 2003. If it is there then open a simple word file and convert it to PDF using 'Adobe PDF'- > 'Create PDF' option. Let us know what happens.
If 'Adobe PDF' menu is not there then goto Help-> 'Disabled Items' and see if 'PDFMaddin' entry is present there. Select it and press Enable. Restart Word now and check if it works now.

Report · Aug 14, 2007

Cannot delete or repair Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0, nor access original disk since "accidently" using a registry repair program. I have used system restore to no avail.

The following scenarios occur when trying to "change/remove" Adobe program/updates:

Attempt to Uninstall:
Adobe Acrobat/Reader 6.0.6 Update
WINDOWS INSTALLER window:
The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing installation package Adobe Acrobat and Reader 6.0.6 Update.msi in the box below.
C:\Program Files\Adobe\{9074E407-55DC-4A4C-A591-6ADA60386EF4}\

Click Okay and appears--

ADD OR REMOVE PROGRAMS window:
The installation source for this product is not available. Verify that the source exists and that you can access it.

Attempt to Uninstall:
Adobe Acrobat/Reader 6.0.5 Update
WINDOWS INSTALLER window:
The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing installation package Adobe Acrobat and Reader 6.0.6 Update.msi in the box below.
C:\Program Files\Adobe\{490A4339-AFA5-4098-A374-7752A1A30308}\

Click Okay and appears--

ADD OR REMOVE PROGRAMS window:
The installation source for this product is not available. Verify that the source exists and that you can access it.

Attempt to Uninstall
Adobe Acrobat/Reader 6.0.1 Professional
ADD OR REMOVE PROGRAMS window:
This patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package.

Anyway to recover functionality to remove/change (uninstall/repair)?

I also am unable to access the original disc now. WINDOWS INSTALLER window:
This patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package.

Any help available?

Report · Aug 14, 2007

Things seem pretty desperate and a clean install of Windows might be
in order. But you could try the Microsoft Windows Installer Clean-up
Utility.

Aandi Inston

Report · Aug 15, 2007

Jim I think you should add a separate thread for your problem. The issue in this thread is different than what you are facing. Other users might have a solution for your problem and might help.

Report · Aug 16, 2007

Believe it or not, I actually HAVE already done a clean install of windows, office 2007, and acrobat pro, to NO avail. I get the exact same message as does SAW. Is this a wide-spread problem? I can't imagine that it's just me, since I have re-installed EVERYTHING; from the OS up.

Report · Aug 17, 2007

I think these messages are most of the times file specific only. Try out following and let us know what you find:

- Try to create PDF out of a simple new one page word file. Remember that the new file should have the same extention as the problem file (.doc or .docx). If it works then issue is file specific.
- Try to print the problem file over to 'Adobe PDF' printer.
- Are you able to create PDFs from Excel and PowerPoint.

I assume you have Acrobat 8.1 (you should see a 'Acrobat' ribbon in your office application).

Report · Aug 17, 2007

So, I have done all of the requisite tests (and yes, I am running Acrobat 8.1)... and here are the results <drumroll>: 1. Whether for a .doc or a .docx, long or short, simple or complex, it fails. I feel it important to distinguish here that I do not even get the error message when converting within word. When converting within word, the dialogue and the process simply disappear without any indication what has happened, and when I look for the file, it hasn't been made. The error message occurs only when I right-click and select "Convert to Adobe PDF". Now, there appears to be a way of doing it when I use the "Save as PDF or XPS" function that Microsoft added on when Adobe was taking too long to get a workable plugin, but I want to emphasize that I did not add that in until AFTER I had tried everything else through Adobe. I also would like to say that I inherently think I am getting lower functionality by creating a PDF through a Microsoft program instead of through the adobe program that is DESIGNED to do it. 2. The other thing that is enigmatic at best and downright annoying at worst, is that it DOES work to print with the Adobe Printer. So it is apparently some problem with the ribbon functionality or with the right-click functionality. Either way, it is ridiculous. Of the three ways designed to produce a pdf, the best I can get is the darned pdf printer. This is very inconvenient for the purposes of combining multiple documents into a single pdf, and all I really want is some decent, designed functionality. 3. Yes, both excel and powerpoint work from the ribbon commands, and from the right-click functionality ... any ideas? I'm desperate here. THanks.

Report · Aug 17, 2007

Using Acrobat 8.1 in Vista 64 with Word 2007.

When I print to Adobe PDF or "save as" Adobe PDF, two things happen.

I always get this message: "The Printer Command in Invalid"

After hitting OK, it does convert. But I found that
on one page where I have an embedded excel spreadsheet, the spreadsheet prints sold black.

Same thing if I convert the DOCX to DOC and print.

I don't know if this is Vista or Adobe.

Report · Aug 18, 2007

James you should open up a new thread and I'm sure someone will be able to help you there.

David you are pretty right, PDFs created using Adobe PDFMaker offer much more functionality then the ones created from MS 'Save as PDF' addin.
Anyway, have you tried the workaround I'd mentioned above in this thread (see Mkashif - 6:42am Aug 10, 07 PST (#9 of 21)). The PDF created using 'Quick and simple' route offers a bit less functionality then 'Fully Functional' but far more than what we get from Microsoft route.
Do let me know if it works. Btw you are using Office 2007 Pro or Std.

Report · Aug 19, 2007

David,
Looks like I found a possible solution to your problem. Can you try this:
"This may sound strange, but I have seen this work on one machine, so you might want to give a shot:
Open Word 2007
Click the circular Office button on top left to open the file menu
Press the "Word Options" button at the bottom of this screen
In the "Popular" tab, make sure that your user name and initials are are filled up with reasonable values.
Close and Restart Word and then try converting."

I found this posted by Abhigyan Modi at http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bc48a7e

Report · Aug 19, 2007

I need help from an Adobe expert. I recently upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2007, and updated from Acrobat 5 to Acrobat 8. Here is my problem: I have WORD 2003 documents that contain embedded EXCEL data. The EXCEL data contains pictures that I inserted for my reports. I open the embedded EXCEL file by selecting "Object - Edit" in the WORD document. After making an edit to the EXCEL file, and closing it, in the past I would create an Acrobat image and my Acrobat document looked exactly like my WORD document. Now, when I edit and save the embedded EXCEL file and create an Acrobat file, the pictures in my Acrobat document are out of place. The WORD document still has them in a neat row but the Acrobat image shifts them over and up. Is there an Adobe setting that needs to be changed?

Thanks for any input...