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unknown81883082
unknown81883082
Participant
November 1, 2017
Answered

Printing Large PDF documents - giving errors

  • November 1, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 25004 views

Hi,

When printing large PDF documents anywehre from 500 - 5000 pages. Some of our staff will get the below messages consistently.

'There are no pages selected' or 'The document could not be printed'

We're using Adobe Acrobat XI 11.0.21, Windows 8.1 & Windows 10 and Kyocera KX Printer Latest Driver 7.2.0731

Printing the same documents from Google Chrome is fine, turning off 'Enable Enhanced Security' hasn't helped.

Can you please assist

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Dov Isaacs

I have recently run into the same kind of printing issue, with the same error messages that Peter posted above. The documents I have are also quite large, well in excess of 500 pages [though thankfully not as big as 5000!]

Further confusing the issue is the fact that this not only happens when printing to a "real" printer, but also to a virtual printer. We use a document imaging system called Laserfiche, which has a virtual printer to expedite insertion of new content [you print to the virtual printer, which places the document contents directly into the database]. While the job is building in Adobe, with the Laserfiche virtual printer as the destination, it halts with the errors listed above. If I print to a networked printer, the same thing happens.

The memory question is a bit of a conundrum, as I'm running a 64-bit operating system [Windows 10], and have 32GB RAM installed on my workstation, and I experience the same problem as a user with an 8GB RAM system. The only thing that is 32-bit is Adobe Reader DC! Unless I am missing something, they do not have a 64-bit version of their Reader software.

And finally, I dug up a different .pdf of an owner's manual, somewhere in the range of ~800 pages, and it processes fine, no errors or crashes. Is there something in the way a .pdf is created that could be causing a problem? When loading one of our problem files, I get the purple banner line, indicating that it is a fillable form [and that it can't be saved, etc...] - could this be part of the problem? The large owner's manual is not a fillable form, and loads much quicker... but it works.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any information you can pass along.


For better or worse, both Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat are 32-bit applications under Windows. As such, these applications only have access to a 3GB address space no matter how much RAM you have installed on your system.

There isn't an actual page limit on PDF files either for display or printing. I've personally printed PDF files with over 10,000 pages without a problem.

What is likely an issue is that of page complexity in combination with number of pages. And the page complexity issue is typically tied up with the issue of transparency. When pages are printed, Acrobat will typically blend the transparent objects to opaque objects. This is both a CPU and memory intensive process. To determine whether this is the issue, try printing ranges of pages individually and see if that helps.

At some point, we will hopefully have 64-bit versions of Reader and Acrobat for Windows as we currently do for MacOS (Apple forced us into that but Microsoft still produces 32-bit editions of Windows and manufacturers still sell 32-bit only Windows systems).

          - Dov

2 replies

unknown81883082
unknown81883082Author
Participant
November 10, 2017

Adobe this is the only form of Support for Acrobat, can you please advise on any further steps I can take?

Abambo
Community Expert
AbamboCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2017

I'm not Adobe, I hope that you did  understand that. I'm a user as you are. I have only this fancy badge attached to my name saying that in the eyes of Adobe, I am quite good in advising other users.

Support of your product (Acrobat XI) has expired, so basically you are stuck with this forum. Printing problems are quite complex, because rare and involve many components (software - OS - network - printer and driver), so solutions aren't straight. The error you get is not very verbose which adds to the complexity.

But you have tried to print with a current version of Acrobat and get the same error. This opens may be the way to contact Adobe via chat (using your adobe id on adobe.com, you have a "contact us" button).

This said, I will ask a couple of other questions that may be important in understanding your problem:

  • The error message comes before even Acrobat starts to get to work? Or is the error coming up somewhere in the middle of the job?
  • Did you try to select pages for printing? Say for a 500 pages document select pages 1-500 instead of printing all pages? I know that this is literally the same, but internally in the programs logic there could be other paths to be taken.
  • Did you try to print the first half of the document and then the second half? (Or the first third, second and last...)

One thing that I until now did not recommend to you, but what I normally do for smaller print jobs: Try print as image in the advanced tab of the print dialog. In this case, Acrobat will take over the rendering and sending a picture to the printer. The drawback of this is that it will take a lot more time and the print queue will need to handle a real big sized file, given you will have 500 pages to print - that's also the reason, why I didn't dare until now to propose this solution.

The question of the queue size was just to confirm that you stay under some magic sizes (2Gb, 4Gb, ...) as they could be problematic to handle. 32 bits systems cannot handle sizes above 4Gb in RAM, some file systems have a 2 Gb or 4Gb limit for file size etc. If the document is however not graphic intensive, this could be ok. Please note that scanned text is also considered as graphics.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer
    normc62
    normc62
    Participant
    August 27, 2018

    I have recently run into the same kind of printing issue, with the same error messages that Peter posted above. The documents I have are also quite large, well in excess of 500 pages [though thankfully not as big as 5000!]

    Further confusing the issue is the fact that this not only happens when printing to a "real" printer, but also to a virtual printer. We use a document imaging system called Laserfiche, which has a virtual printer to expedite insertion of new content [you print to the virtual printer, which places the document contents directly into the database]. While the job is building in Adobe, with the Laserfiche virtual printer as the destination, it halts with the errors listed above. If I print to a networked printer, the same thing happens.

    The memory question is a bit of a conundrum, as I'm running a 64-bit operating system [Windows 10], and have 32GB RAM installed on my workstation, and I experience the same problem as a user with an 8GB RAM system. The only thing that is 32-bit is Adobe Reader DC! Unless I am missing something, they do not have a 64-bit version of their Reader software.

    And finally, I dug up a different .pdf of an owner's manual, somewhere in the range of ~800 pages, and it processes fine, no errors or crashes. Is there something in the way a .pdf is created that could be causing a problem? When loading one of our problem files, I get the purple banner line, indicating that it is a fillable form [and that it can't be saved, etc...] - could this be part of the problem? The large owner's manual is not a fillable form, and loads much quicker... but it works.

    Any ideas or suggestions?

    Thanks in advance for any information you can pass along.

    Abambo
    Community Expert
    AbamboCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 1, 2017

    Please try with a current version of Acrobat Reader.

    Please ensure also that the printer drivers are current, even that I suppose that this has no influence according to the error messages.

    ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer
    unknown81883082
    unknown81883082Author
    Participant
    November 3, 2017

    Hi, I've downloaded current version of Acrobat Reader DC but issue still continues.

    Abambo
    Community Expert
    AbamboCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 3, 2017

    Unfortunately, I do not have such big documents to print.

    Are your documents graphics heavy or mostly text? Can you try printing to other printers (other printer model/maker)? Who generated the documents (you, external service provider on demand, vendor selling the document also to others)?

    How is the Kyocera printer connected to the computer? If networked, try a direct connection. If a direct connection, try a networked connection.

    How big is the print queue on your system during such a print?

    Is the error generated by Acrobat or by the printing subsystem? Can you post a snapshot of the error message?

    ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer
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