PDF issues: Backgrounds don't export or view correctly

[davidicus]

I have a 75 page PDF exported from Google Sheets. I want to view it in Acrobat Pro, but the background appears to be missing throughout, so text is unreadable. Graphics from the Sheets source appear fine. I don't have access to the original Google Sheets document any more.

Here's what a page looks like after being Placed into an InDesign document. I've cropped to reveal a dark blue Rectangle Frame I've added to the InDesign Master. I drew a green Frame on this page.

Here's what it looks like in Acrobat Pro DC after exporting from InDesign to PDF.

I'm pretty desperate to figure out what's going on here. At first I blamed the Sheets PDF, but since InDesign's dark blue background doesn't export, the problem seems related.

BTW, if I view the PDF in Firefox or Chrome, it displays correctly.

[Chad Chelius]

We could go down a long rabbit hole trying to figure out why this is behaving this way. Being that you have no control how google sheets exports the PDF, I'm thinking the issue is with how the PDF file was generated. I'd try a few things.

• Open the PDF in Acrobat and do a "Save As" to a new file
• Export the file to Postscript from within Acrobat, then convert the postscript file to PDF using Acrobat Distiller. Just open Distiller and drag the postscript file onto the window. This is totally a brute force method but being that these came from Google Sheets, I'm guessing your not too concerned with color conversion etc.

Place the saved or converted file back into InDesign and see if that helps.

[davidicus]

wow--postscript--been a while, my old adversary!

thanks for this. you're right, not concerned with color fidelity.

didn't work, unfortunately 😕 distilled the postscript and the resulting PDF displays in-browser, but is white in Acrobat.

i don't control the Sheets export, but i DO control InDesign, so i'm curious why the dark blue Master Frame doesn't appear either.

[Chad Chelius]

Can you share the PDF?

[davidicus]

sure! here's page 1: https://adobe.ly/2uGoJzx

just noticed it previews on assets.adobe.com correctly too.

[Dov Isaacs]

I downloaded the file you posted? Is this the file from Google directly or the PDF exported from InDesign?

What I see in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (latest version) is:

What is missing? I certainly see the blue background.

          - Dov

@Chad Chelius - Please don't recommend the “refrying PDF via distillation of PostScript” hack. From our experience, it most often causes much more harm than good and in this situation would unlikely solve whatever the real problem is.

[davidicus]

thank you!

that is the direct Google Sheets export, opened in Acrobat DC, where I extricated the first page.

fascinated to see you can view it properly. I'll try uninstalling Acrobat then reinstalling I guess? I'm not aware of any settings that would cause this.

[Dov Isaacs]

Nor are we aware of any settings that would cause what you see. The PDF file is very simple, all DeviceRGB text and vector. The only thing that is wrong with the PDF file is that for some reason, Google is unnecessarily making the entire page a transparency group. However, that shouldn't cause the missing blue background.

Sure, you can reinstalling the software, but I seriously doubt that there is anything configurable item that such a time-consuming process would fix. But please report back and let us know if that somehow helps.

          - Dov

[Chad Chelius]

Dov I don't often recommend that hack to people but it is useful in desperate situations where you've run out of options. That was the case here and I did explain that this was the "brute force" method.

Regardless, I looked at the file and actually placed it into InDesign and exported to PDF as the OP was describing and the PDF exported just fine. Blue background there and all. I even tried using multiple presets including PDFX-1a but never saw the missing blue box. I was thinking that because there was transparency used in the file (not sure why), that flattening might do the trick but all presets output as expected. So I'm wondering if there's something going on with your copy of InDesign. Is it possible to try placing and exporting on another machine? Or at least try a different preset in the case that you are using a unique preset that is creating the issue. Try one of the basic ones such as High Quality Print or Smallest File size and let us know what happens.

[davidicus · Accepted solution]

reinstalling fixed the issue.

thanks for trying the file, folks. Acrobat was the last thing i'd have blamed otherwise. i'd love to know how it went bad, but am so relieved it's correct again!

[Dov Isaacs]

Amazing. We know of nothing in the program or code that would cause weird symptoms like that, but we're so glad you are up and going.

          - Dov