Acrobat PDF Printer Erratic in FMP8.5

[nutso]

Hi all,

I've been having the worst time possible trying to create PDFs using the “PDF Printer” that comes installed with Adobe Acrobat Standard 6.0 out of Filemaker 8.5. (I’m using Windows XP sp2)

I typically print 100's or 1000's of carton labels for our warehouse out of Filemaker. In the past we've printed them out of FMP6 but recently we switched to FMP8.5.

When we converted our databases over and I tried printing labels this is what happens. The Acrobat print dialog pops up and, runs extremely slow. When it finishes, the file created only has a portion of the created labels. In other words of 500 labels only 280 print out and I have 220 blank pages. It’s erratic as to how many labels it actually prints out. It does the same exactly thing on multiple computers all with different specs. (this rules out memory/processor issues)

In FM6 I never had a problem printing this many pages to a PDF and it was extremely fast. Nothing has changed with Acrobat 6 and it's printer settings. The settings are exactly the same when I go to print from both versions of Filemaker. What the heck is wrong with FM8.5? This has caused me to revert all of my label databases back to 6.

Thanks

-nut

[meglome]

Exactly the same thing happens to me but I'm using Acrobat Professional 7 with all the updates installed. Sometimes all the pages appear properly in the pdf sometimes they don't but it's always slow.

[BowDown]

I had something similar. I descided to use www.pdffactory.com .

Works well for creating pdf's from fileMaker.

[Stuart Taylor]

This is a documented issue on the FileMaker Website ... they are aware and working on it...

Knowlegebase Answer ID 6219

here is what they say:

----Question----

Why do blank pages appear when I print large numbers of records on Windows?

----Answer----

12/07/2006 12:39 PM

APPLICABLE TO:

FileMaker Pro 8.5, FileMaker Pro 8.5 Advanced

FileMaker has recently become aware of an issue when printing large numbers of records on a Windows based computer. Some customers may experience blank pages or pages with unexpected characters after the first few pages of a large print operation.

FileMaker Engineering is aware of this issue, and is currently researching it to better understand the root cause, and possible remedies.

A possible workaround is to use a script to control the size of your print operations. We have included a sample of such a script below, and have verified that it resolves the issue for at least some customers. It is not a long term solution, but can provide temporary relief until FileMaker is able to offer a permanent solution for this issue.

The script bellow takes a found set of records to be printed, and then tags them for identification. It then automatically loops through these records and prints them in smaller groups.

Before modifying your existing scripts to incorporate the script steps below, you must add a text field to your database (named “Flag” in the example below). It is used by the script to tag found sets for printing.

Example Script:

#$printsize is a variable that you should adjust up or down to find the right number of records that can be printed without experiencing the blank page issue.

Set Variable [ $printsize; Value:20 ]

#Initialize the flag field to identify the records that should be printed as the script loops through print jobs.

Replace Field Contents [ print test::Flag; Replace with calculation: "x" ] [ No dialog ]

Loop

Set Error Capture [ On ]

#Find the remaining records to be printed.

Perform Find [ Specified Find Requests: Find Records; Criteria: print test::Flag: “"X"” ] [ Restore ]

Exit Loop If [ Get ( FoundCount )=0 ]

#If there are more records than the $printsize variable specifies, omit them from each print loop.

If [ Get ( FoundCount )>$printsize ]

Go to Record/Request/Page [ $printsize+1 ] [ No dialog ]

Omit Multiple Records [ Get ( FoundCount )-$printsize ] [ No dialog ]

End If

Refresh Window [ Flush cached join results ]

Flush Cache to Disk

Print [ Records being browsed; All Pages; Orientation: Portrait; Paper size: 8.5" x 11" ] [ Restore; No dialog ]

#Remove the flag from those records that have already been printed.

Replace Field Contents [ print test::Flag; Replace with calculation: "" ]

[ No dialog ]

End Loop

Set Error Capture [ Off ]

[dankpunk]

I also had this problem using FlashPaper and CutePDF. I didn't try the script mentioned in this post but using the Save Records as PDF script step (in FM Adv 8.5) worked perfectly for me.

Hope this helps someone -

Dan