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Answered

PDF reactor suddenly being used when creating a PDF from RoboHelp

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 21, 2023
12 replies
2157 views

Hello, My team has the latest version of RoboHelp (2022.1.188). We also have Acrobat Pro 2022.003.20322.
All of a sudden, when we create a PDF of one or more topics in RoboHelp, the PDF has this at the top of each page: "Created with RealObjects PDFreactor(R) Evaluation Version | https://www.pdfreactor.com"

We didn't install PDFreactor and we don't want it. We tested other programs like PhotoShop, Outlook, Word, etc. and no other program is doing this except for RoboHelp.

After searching around, we see that RoboHelp and Adobe "integrates PDFreactor into RoboHelp."

We don't want to use this way of creating PDFs and have this disclaimer at the top of each PDF page! How can we return to regular use of PDFs with Acrobat and not PDFreactor?

Thanks!

Alexandra

Correct answer Alexandra Duffy

The 2022.2 update fixed this issue. Thanks!

G

gbr_555

Inspiring

When will the PDFreactor version embedded with RH 2022 be updated?
As we see in the manifest file of the PDFreactor.jar (found in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp\resources\data\pdf), the currently used PDFreactor version is 11.4.8. There have been a lot of fixes made (up to 11.6.12, see the changelog at the PDFreactor website - sorry I'm not allowed to provide the direct link here).

Even a major update to PDFreactor 12 (version 12.1.0) is already available, providing some more useful features we would like to use.

RoboHelp provides some of the features in the PDF template dialog, but not everything is built in up to the perfection we're thriving for. Example: We wanted to use the table continuation marker at page breaks, but there is no way to define the parameters and attributes needed with that "RoboHelp feature" (stemming from the PDFreactor), such as font styling and margins top/bottom to the adjoining table borders. So we found another solution (building on condition tags for PDF output) but that's a lot of manual work and could change with each and every line in the content.

That's why we searched for the PDF generator (which wasn't the Acrobat Distiller as we clearly saw), and stumbled upon the PDFreactor in the Adobe RoboHelp documentation where it shows in a workaround to embedding fonts in the PDF output.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Only Adobe can answer that. I suggest for this one you need to go to Adobe Support. See https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp for your Adobe Support options. The email link tcssup@adobe.com is recommended as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including RoboHelp.

________________________________________________________
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G

gbr_555

Inspiring

Thanks, Peter! I'll write an email.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Thanks @Stefan Gentz. Saves me setting up a test. 🙂 I had contacted VK but he is travelling.

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S

Stefan Gentz

Community Manager

I have checked with the product team, and it is a known bug that appears in specific scenarios. They are already working on fixing it and an update will be made available probably next week.

A

Alexandra DuffyAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Stefan, that is great to know. Thank you very much and thanks for the help, Peter! (We have Acrobat Pro just FYI Peter.)

I look forward to the update from Adobe.

Alexandra

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Ah! What I can confirm is that Save As PDF is working without that issue for me. Do you have Acrobat Pro or the basic version that installs with RoboHelp?

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I'll poke around in the morning but what do you mean by TOC/PDF preset? The TOC bit is what is confusing me.

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A

Alexandra DuffyAuthor

Inspiring

What I mean is, if we right-click on a topic and select "Save As PDF," we get this problem. But if we create a one-topic TOC (or several topics for that matter), and use that TOC in the PDF output preset, we do not have the problem.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

As I said, I have never seen it mentioned before.

What's the remote setup? RoboHelp is on your local machines and the project is remote or is RoboHelp on the remote machine?

Were your tests for the PDFreactor program and the registry on the remote machine(s) and did you also test the machines you are working on?

I am clutching at straws here but pending confirmation I have sought, I believe this is a problem unique to your environment.

The real test if it is possible is installing RoboHelp on a different machine that is accessed directly.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

A

Alexandra DuffyAuthor

Inspiring

Sorry, when I said remote, I meant that we are all working remotely and that we aren't all in one office or location. I didn't mean we are working on remote machines. I appreciate your clutching at straws!
Clearly, Adobe knows about this program. If you go to: https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/using/generate-pdf-output.html they mention that "Before adding a new external font, clear the font cache. The font cache is at "user.home/.PDFreactor". Example - /Users/rhuser/.PDFreactor. "

So this has something to do with fonts? We tried clearing the font cache but it made no difference.

I don't think it would be helpful to install on a different machine, since we are all on different machines. That was what I was attempting to say when I said we all work remotely.
Here is our best guess - this PDFreactor has been around (the folder is not new - it's from 2021) and it is used silently by Adobe. However in the latest update, the engineers may have put in the wrong product key (for the evaluation version) in the code. So we are now getting PDFs that say we are using the evaluation version of this product.
I think this is a bug. I'm filing it with Adobe and emailing tech support as you suggested, above.

In the meantime, we can create PDFs by using the TOC/PDF preset method, so we are OK.
I will certainly post any resolution to this here.

Thank you for your help, Peter, and Jeff!

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Did the change come immediately after an update?

Can you install on a second machine and see if you get the same issue?

________________________________________________________
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A

Alexandra DuffyAuthor

Inspiring

We updated to RH 2022.1 recently. It had been a while since we needed to create a PDF, so we aren't entirely sure when this started. But there are five of us, all on different computers, working remotely, with the same issue. I posted here, wondering if others also see this, to know if it's just us or more widespread.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

You wonder if it snuck in with some of the other products they mention on their site.

A

Alexandra DuffyAuthor

Inspiring

Nothing on that site is installed on our machines except for RoboHelp.
At first I was sure this had nothing to do with Adobe, but it's only happening in RoboHelp and only recently.

We did notice that it happens when you right-click on a topic and select Save as PDF, but it does not happen if you create a TOC and use the PDF output preset.

Thanks,

Alexandra

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Registry search?

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

A

Alexandra DuffyAuthor

Inspiring

The "program" (if it is a program?) does not show up in the registry.

Good thought though.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

You would be surprised how often a "have you" question about something seemingly obvious reveals it hasn't been done.

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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