Illustrator CS4 error: Object label badly formatted?

[ecuadorian-in-charge]

has anyone received an error in illustrator CS4: Acrobat PDF File Format is having difficulties. Object label badly formatted? I am ON a mac and cannot open files after this error, help?

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

More or less has been shown to be so from many past posts on a number

of similar issues.

But you are correct if you want to continue to use Suitcase go ahead.

[aakozy]

I was able to successfully place my file in a new .ai file, but encounted the same issue as with opening and resaving in preview - only the content on the artboards is salvaged, which sort of worked out for me (thank my lucky starts i had just placed my selects on the artboards).

When designing a logo I work off the artboards a lot - exploring all my options freely within the file. I lost a lot of exploration and content - like 20 hours worth that was not on the artboards! And like I said, I'm one lucky bastard - it couldn't have been but a half hour prior that I put my selects on the artboard... otherwise I would have lost an entire logo project.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Geez!

change your font manager if you value your time?

the problem will come back until you do so.

[Eye-T]

I work off the artboard too, but luckily only lost about 20% of my work.

Better than the whole shebang!

For now I have disabled the suitcase preferences panel in Illustrator, remove PDF compatible when saving and finally save as CS3.

Wade says to change font manager, he suggests Font Agent Pro.

Maybe hes right...

[rob Frye]

Got my file back!

I've bene working on a file all weekend. This morning was given the error "Object label badly formatted?" when trying to open in Illustrator CS4. I was able to open the file in Acrobat but unable to resave. Started to do some research and thought all was lost. Tried opening the file on other workstations with no luck. As a last resort, I gave it to our prepress department to see if they could process the file. They were able to open the file and print to pdf. At this point I extracted my critical data from the pdf and created a new Ai file. Seems most of the work was save.

Revelent System Specs.

Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.1)

CS4 Illustator (14.0.0)

Suitcase Fusion 2 (13.2.0)

*** changing my font manager...

[Eye-T]

Were you able to reclaim anything from outside the artboard/page borders?

[rob Frye]

Sorry, should have mentioned...

I was unable to recover anything outside my artboard. Luckily in my case, I had just started cleaning up my files as the design was done and being prepped for press. I had just moved everything revelent onto the artboard.

[Thomas Phinney]

I can certainly undertand the frustration and anger being expressed here. Document corruption is one of the most serious things that can go wrong in one's workflow. It shouldn't happen in the first place, and when it does happen, it needs to be fixed, NOW!

Extensis takes this problem very seriously and is extremely concerned. I've reviewed the issue with tech support, with all the information we've collected to date, and Extensis has a number of people actively investigating it. It's premature for us to point the finger at anybody else (or vice versa) at this point.

We did encounter something like this in testing, but that problem was resolved prior to release, and we have not yet reproduced this situation with the shipping version of Suitcase Fusion 2 13.2. This suggests that there are some particular variables which need to be in place for this to occur. This issue needs to be addressed ASAP, and while it is of course our desire to figure it out (even if it turns out not to be our bug), we'll appreciate your help. We don't yet know what the cause is, or in whose court a fix might lie. For now, I encourage any Suitcase Fusion customer experiencing this issue to:

1) Check this page to see if there's been a solution or updated info: http://www.extensis.com/en/support/suitcase-fusion-2.jsp (look especially at the "Top Knowledge Base Articles" section). There's nothing on this issue here today, but since this forum post is going to be up indefinitely, I have to recommend checking!

2) If there's no new info, contact Extensis tech support and help us figure this out for everybody's benefit. You can use the online contact form at http://www.extensis.com/en/support/contact_prod_support.jsp, or call tech support at 1-503-274-7030.

When we have enough information to say something useful about what is (or is not) involved in causing the problem, we'll do so.

Until that level of information is available, I'm not sure comments based on older versions of the application,  so vague as to be impossible to verify or rebut, they aren't much use to anybody. Suitcase Fusion 2 is based on an entirely new code base, rewritten from scratch, compared to Suitcase Fusion or any older versions of Suitcase. Any bugs one saw in those older products can't just be assumed to persist, so arguments which boil down to "some older versions sucked, so this does too" don't seem very reasonable.

Regards,

T

Thomas Phinney

Sr Product Manager

Font Solutions

Extensis, a division of Celartem, Inc.

[HaoleBoy]

Thank you, Thomas, for letting us know the company's position and course of action.  I did notice that Adobe released an updated version of Acrobat Pro last night.  They say it is for some security fixes, but who knows.  I'm not techy enough to know much about the inner workings of the native pdf format Illustrator files use, but I can't help but wonder if they found a few bugs in the system as it relates to pdf and Acrobat's role in using that format on a computer.

If I get time, I may go do some testing with CS4 again now that I have installed the Acrobat Pro 9 update.  Wouldn't it be great if they fixed it on their end?

Hey, I'm a dreamer....

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Well it is good to hear from Thomas Phinney once again. But I see it this way it is now up to Suitcase to prove itself. Font Agent Pro has been solid and though things can go wrong with FAP they are simple to fix.

Now Suitcase may have all knew code but that in itself does not mean it has resolved the problems and has been brought up to snuff.

I would still suspect suitcase with a problem like this.

That is the wa I see it I hope Suitcase does prove to be the old stable work horse it was but until it provesb i don't see it.

[Charles Whalley]

We're all running CS4 and Suitcase here and in the last week we have had three corrupt files - but the preview trick seems to work a treat. Just to add to the font issue - one of our corrupt files has been whilst adding text to a photoshop document! No problems yet in InDesign. Hope this is resolved shortly - but encouraging to here a professional response from Suitcase.

[Thomas Phinney]

We now understand the problem, and are testing a solution. Here's my current understanding of all the elements of this issue.

CAUSE: The problem occurs in an interaction between Illustrator CS4, Suitcase Fusion 2 v13.2, and having an Illustrator document with one or more text boxes, containing text, which is *completely* off the artboard—not even the bounding box is touching the artboard. *Additionally*, there must also be at least one text box, with text in it, which is *on* the artboard (even so much as having the bounding box partly on the artboard is sufficient, again). When these conditions are met, saving the document *may* (but does not always) cause the problem.

PROBLEM: Attempting to open an affected document in Illustrator CS4 fails, with an "object label badly formatted" error. The problem can occur with older illustrator documents opened in CS4, as well as native CS4 documents.

UNAFFECTED: Despite any speculation in this thread, this problem does not affect Photoshop, nor has it occurred with any version of Extensis Suitcase older than Suitcase Fusion 2 v13.2, which shipped about eight days ago.

SOLUTION: The problem should be resolved by a 13.2.1 dot release. Although things could be delayed if we find something unexpected in testing, we currently expect to have the fix available this week, probably tomorrow (Thursday).

DOCUMENT RECOVERY: Extensis can fix any Illustrator CS4 document which exhibits this problem. For now, contact Extensis tech support if you need help with recovering any such Illustrator document. Be prepared to send tech support the affected Illustrator file(s). You can use the online contact form at http://www.extensis.com/en/support/contact_prod_support.jsp, or call tech support at 1-503-274-7030.

Special thanks to the users whose suffering and detailed reports helped us figure this out!

Regards,

T

Thomas Phinney

Sr Product Manager, Font Solutions

Extensis, a division of Celartem, Inc.

[HaoleBoy]

Thanks Thomas!  Now that you explained it, that is completely consistent with when it would be fine and when it would corrupt the file.  I didn't realize that each time it happened I had moved text off of the artboard and had text on the artboard as well.

I look forward to the update and getting back off CS3 and going back to work in CS4.

[Charles Whalley]

Thomas

Whilst I appreciate that this is an illustrator forum - our problems with this 'object label badly formatted' situation, are not just with Illustrator but with Photoshop as well, as per my previous post and my form sent to Extensis a couple of days ago - (incident number is: 2062587). I do hope that the solution you have found resolves the issue for both Photoshop and Illustrator.

[HaoleBoy]

That is strange.  I have been doing some major projects with Photoshop CS4 along with the Illustrator projects and have had absolutely no issues at all.  I did a LOT of text work there and it didn't even burp.  What happens in PS?  I would like to keep my eye open for this.

Thanks

[Charles Whalley]

Photoshop CS4, 3 pic montage, pretty basic, client wanted to add text, so simply went to the text tool added text and on saving got the message 'object label badly formatted' and on trying to reopen the file was corrupted.

This has still only caused us problems on 3 files during the last week (2 illustrator and 1 photoshop).

[Thomas Phinney]

Charles:

First, I should make clear that this particular error message predates this issue in Suitcase Fusion 2, and doesn't necessarily always have the same cause. Unfortunately there wasn't much detail either here or in your email to Extensis support. Somebody will doubtless be in contact with you from our UK office... things we would want to know would include:

- does this Photoshop document have a placed Illustrator file or placed Illustrator PDF in it?

- were you entering text on the Photoshop artboard or off?

- was this in any way related to saving or having saved the document?

I will say that with what you've reported so far, and knowing a whole lot of detail about the issue in SF2 v13.2, unless you have a placed AI file or PDF file in your Photoshop document, I can't imagine how this could be the same cause or even related (and if you have placed a "bad" AI/PDF file, it still isn't particularly a Photoshop issue). But I'll keep an open mind until we have more information.

Regards,

T

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

As I recall Thomas this is actually a very old and outstanding issue

with Suitcase and Illustrator now that you bring up the cause and

effect.

[Thomas Phinney]

Wade,

Although I haven't been at Extensis forever, I am inclined to believe both my Google searches and the engineer I've been working with, two sources which agree that this particular issue is new. We believe we know exactly what code change triggered the issue, and it was in an area we simply weren't doing before.

Of course, if you have any specific source I can look at for any occurrence of this same issue prior to the past eight days, I'd be most curious to see it.

Cheers,

T

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

There was an issue a while back several years ago where the text box

was off the document and a text box was on the paste board and that

cause a specific type of corruption. I do not recall if it was

associated with a font corruption or a database corruption or a

specific software. It is possible that it was never determined and

perhaps an update fixed it somehow. But I am pretty certain it was

Illustrator Perhaps version 9.

It may have been when saving a document with a text box that was

partially off the artboard.

I can't find it either!

[Cre8ive74]

I think it was Illustrator 10 back in 2003 --- honestly to all the users that have been on Extensis for years and years (like I was) do yourself a favor and look at Font Agent Pro

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

I am incline to think v9 or 10 probably 10.

[Charles Whalley]

Thomas

In the office this morning in the UK and have an update from Extensis - One big problem - on loading it it comes up with the error message 'Update Error! the update is improperly signed.

Please advise urgently.

[Charles Whalley]

Am told that this only happens on auto update - try the zip file off the web site.

[Charles Whalley]

In the photoshop and single illustrator problem we have encountered, then the text was NOT off the pasteboard. In the second illustrator problem we have had, it was.

We have updated the office today with all 6 macs with the latest Suitcase update, posted last night (see my message re suitcase software update error message!)

We have also encountered a problem on our only non intel mac where the update has corrupted suitcase (thank god for time machine)

I'll investigate this further tonight after work.