Converting and Appending Emails to PDF no longer appears to be working correctly. This issue has been on going since the beginning of February 2019 for the organization I work for. Here is the framework of the issue.
- User has Outlook open.
- User right clicks on a single email and/or highlights multiple emails and then right clicks on selection.
- User selects convert to pdf or append to existing pdf.
- Acrobat begins converting/appending to pdf.
Then 3 of the following issues happen.
- Adobe locks up and crashes, corrupting the pdf it created during the convert to pdf job, or corrupting the pdf it was appending to.
- When I say "corrupting", I mean it leaves a tmp file instead of a pdf file. This is not good from an appending standpoint because the original document that the user was appending to is now a tmp file. The file then has to be recovered from backup.
- In some cases, you can actually right click on the tmp file, and open it with Acrobat. Acrobat then restores the PDF and you simply need to save it in it's original location to restore the PDF.
- Adobe progress bar freezes, takes forever, sometimes it finishes. Sometimes it doesn't.
- You then get a (Not Responding) message at the top of the convert/append window. It finally crashes and corrupts the PDF like mentioned above.
- Adobe will finish converting/appending the email(s) to pdf. From face value you think it finished successfully however it doesn't not open the results like it normally would.
- User then navigates to network share or local folder on computer and sees that instead of a PDF document. They are left with a tmp file.
- Same process to recover file as listed in the first bullet point.
The "tmp" files it leaves behind have the following naming scheme.
- A9R1dlfqkl_7w4j89_60c.tmp
- A9R7f1dm_pphpsk_62w.tmp
- A9Rdc6wt9_pphpsj_62w.tmp
- A9Rrkvn6g_7w4j88_60c.tmp
In some cases it will keep the original name of the file and just change it from a .pdf to a .tmp
So far the only "solutions" I can find from Adobe include the following.
- Reboot computer
- Uninstall and then re-install Adobe Acrobat
I wouldn't really call these "solutions" if you're having to reinstall acrobat multiple times a week or reboot your computer multiple times a day. Big interruption to workflow and slows people down.
The only real solution is to move the user to a new computer or perform a fresh install of Windows. Not ideal to do if all other software including the OS is functioning normal except for Adobe Acrobat.
I got to that conclusion by performing the following.
- Uninstall/Reinstall Adobe Acrobat DC Pro (subscription license VIP)
- Create new Outlook profile
- Create new user profile
None of these solutions are permanent. Uninstall/Reinstall only fixes the issue for anywhere from 1 to 3 days before it comes back. Creating new Outlook profile only fixes the issue for 1 to 2 weeks before the problem returns. Creating new user profile corrects the issue the longest, going as long a month and a half before returning.
This is affecting Windows 7 and Windows 10 machines. Office 2010 - Office 2016. It originally only affected one user but over the course of the past almost 4 months, that number has increased exponentially.
I've even tried deploying my own package/build. Still, the issue returns.
All the workstations here are kept a month behind on Windows updates. Unless it is a critical or security update. It is not approved and installed till the following month.
Message was edited by: Will Oropeza noticed a grammar error.
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