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user71762212706467
user71762212706467
Participant
April 2, 2019
Question

Convert to adobe pdf from outlook slow

  • April 2, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 4618 views

Our law firm relies on Acrobat DC Pro for our PDF work.  One feature we regularly use is from within Outlook - "Convert to Adobe PDF", however since we've migrated to Windows 10 from Windows 7 it is so slow as to be unusable.  In Win7 a test email would take about 30 seconds; in Win10 that same test email takes 3.5 minutes.

Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this slowness? 

A law firm, like ours, has many apps tied to Outlook, Word, etc.  I've been working on this for a few months trying every iteration I can think of but with no success.

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1 reply

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
April 2, 2019

Is this timing for a single e-mail or for a whole directory of e-mails? Exactly what Conversion Settings are you using? Anything different between e-mails that convert quickly versus the ones that take 3.5 minutes?

I use the ability to create a PDF file from one or a selected group of e-mails on a regular basis, some with exceptionally large (1 MB) HTML-formatted e-mails on several different Windows 10 systems and have never experienced anything like what you are reporting. There is nothing different that Acrobat is doing under Windows 10 versus Windows 7. (Note, I am not at all discounting what you are reporting!)

The biggest factor in terms of the e-mail to PDF conversion is that of dealing with HTML-formatted e-mails with large numbers of externally-based raster images which Acrobat needs to retrieve as part of the PDF creation, in which case network bandwidth could be a big issue.

Some information might assist. You might even post a saved message that we could try out here at Adobe to replicate the issue.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
user71762212706467
user71762212706467Author
Participant
April 2, 2019

I have isolated a single email that I use as a benchmark.  In our Windows 7 / Office 2010 environment it converts in about 30 seconds.  This same email takes 3.5 minutes in our Windows 10 / Office 2016 build.  It's one email with many links from a group forum.

Once it converts the first PDF subsequent PDF's seem to generate faster, and if I delete the PDF and close / reopen Outlook the print time is slow again on first use.

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
April 3, 2019

It should be expected that generating the first PDF file from Outlook will take a bit longer. Outlook has to initialize the Acrobat PDFMaker plug-in and that plug-in has to initialize its code including some processes used to convert HTML to PDF. That initialization overhead in my experience (with SSDs and a Xeon processor) is typically about 15 seconds or so.

In terms of your benchmark e-mail. The links that make the difference are not simple hyperlinks, but rather, references to external graphics in HTML-formatted e-mails. Each of those individual graphics require connection to a network resource, downloading of the graphics, and conversion of same to a PDF element for inclusion in the final PDF file. For large images, internet bandwidth could make a big difference in throughput. Of course, none of this explains the ludicrous difference that you are seeing between Windows 7/Outlook 2010 and Windows 10/Outlook 2006. We have seen nothing like that or even any difference here at Adobe. Perhaps there is some network parameter set improperly on your Windows 10 system?

I will send you an Outlook message via private e-mail that I would like you to try conversion of PDF of and let me know if you see any significant difference between Windows 7 and Windows 10.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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