Append to PDF Error 800

[mcyrulik]

Has anyone come up with a solution to the "Unable to create File on Disk" error when appending to a PDF?

It works on the PC's of users, but not on macs. I even changed the permissions on my mac desktop to allow all others to read and write. Even when I change the folder to my documents, the system volume - pretty much any folder - I get the same error.

Ideas?

Edited February 28, 2008 by Guest

[Fenton]

It works fine for me. Mac OS 10.4.11, FileMaker Pro Advanced 9.0v3. What is the path?

[mcyrulik]

The path ends up being

/Untitled/Users/oecit/Desktop/Materials-2-26-08.pdf

This is calculated though so that multiple people can run it easily using this:

Get(DesktopPath) & "Materials-" & Substitute ( LeftWords ( $date ; 1 ) ; "/" ; "-" ) & ".pdf"

I have also tried using get(documentspath) and get(systemdrive) with not luck.

I am on OSX 10.4.11 using FM pro 9.0v2 Advanced.

Edited February 28, 2008 by Guest

[Adrian Simpson]

make sure you have the word "file:" or "filemac:" in front of the path string

"file:" & Get(DesktopPath) & "Materials-" & Substitute ( LeftWords ( $date ; 1 ) ; "/" ; "-" ) & ".pdf"

[mcyrulik]

That's in the "Save Records as PDF" step, where I can specify an output.

I do a

filewin:$file

filemac:$file

to take care of both platforms.

But remember - it prints the first pdf just fine. It's just the append that doesn't work.

Edited February 29, 2008 by Guest

[Echon]

I am having a similar problem in reverse. My mac users can append but my PC users can not.

The first call to "save records as pdf" goes fine, but then for the rest of the pages I get this error

' "<>" could not be created on this disk. Use a different name, make more room on the disk, unlock it or use a different disk.'

I also played around with permissions on the folders and paths. The only difference I can see in our solutions is that when we specify our output file references, my filemac: goes first.

I was thinking of checking what platform the script is being called on and then have a separate "Save Records as PDF" step for a Mac and for PC.

Have you tried this?

Also:

I error trapped and got the 800 error (800 Unable to create file on disk)

Per the FileMaker Pro 9 manual:

"File paths are searched in the order in which they appear. FileMaker Pro opens the first file it is able to successfully locate, which completes the search."

What if the file is opened and therefore can not be appended to?

I don't know...I am just throwing ideas out there....

[mcyrulik]

From my understanding(which may not be correct), whether the "filewin:" or "filemac:" is first doesn't matter because FM will look at the system platform also to determine which path to use - that is why I include both.

I thought that the file might be open too, so I put a pause in my script between the first save step and the second to do two things 1) to be able to check for myself to make sure it wasn't open, and 2) to be sure that FM and the OS were done with the previous save step.

I still haven't figured it out.

[holder55]

I was encountering the same problem, but in reverse. Save to pdf working fine on both platforms for a file hosted on a mac; append to pdf worked on the mac but not on the windows box. When I re-created the file paths, starting with the windows files and then adding the file path for the mac files, I got your original problem (append working on the windows but not on mac, but save to pdf working on both platforms).

My guess is that the append to pdf command is buggy. While waiting for it to be fixed, a possible workaround might be to branch on platform type and use append to pdf commands in each branch which include only the file path for that platform. I haven't had an opportunity to try this, however.

Henry

[bdam]

To add to the fire; we work in a Citrix environment which is a PC based thin-client architecture. I'm running locally, and two others are running in Citrix. One of the Citrix users as well as myself get the error. The Other Citrix user does not. We are all using the same PC fileserver.

[bdam]

Hmm; and this morning (they may have been there last night) I see the temp pdfs (ex. aaa04060)on my desktop.

[bdam]

It seems that the Append PDF steps are screwing up the NTFS Permissions on the files. The step that creates the file inherits the permissions correctly from the enclosing folder. However, the step that appends to it disables inheritance on the permissions and adds only the Administrator and SYSTEM groups as well as some other unrecognized account 'Account Unkonwn(SID)'. So somehow, FileMaker is changing the file permissions in a way that disables it's own access to the file.

Use the script debugger to stop after each PDF step and check the permissions as you go along.

Edited March 27, 2008 by Guest

[mcyrulik]

On my mac, the PDF isn't even inheriting the right permissions.

Desktop is

Owner: Read/write

Group: Read/Write

Others: Read/Write

PDf is

Owner: Read/write

Group: Read

Others: Read

So that's not right. I did submit this to FM as a bug haven't heard anything back yet.

[bdam]

I'm pressing the issue with FileMaker via a paid Tech Support call.

What I see happening is this:

FM creates the initial file fine.

For some reason the temp append file that is created isn't created in the destination directory but on my desktop.

When FileMaker attempts to append the file to the destination the permissions from the temp (local) file overwrite the permissions of the destination file.

The local permissions, when applied to the network destination, do not work because the local users do not exist on the network. As a result the append fails.

[bdam]

And here is the result:

"I have researched the issue with the Append to PDF Script Step,

and it is currently a known issue with our software.

At this time we do not have a work-around, and I apologize for any

inconvenience this issue has caused."

FileMaker Support

[bruno]

What is the situation with this problem ?

I just build a nice application with a lot of reports that use the append to pdf scriptstep.

I copy the application from my standalone xp-machine, where everything works fantastic, to a win2003 server (just in a single user mode) and I have the discribed error 800 failure .

Will there be an update or is there a workaround for it ??

[mcyrulik]

well, I assume that iff it is a known issue, that a future release will remedy it.

that's my hope anyway.

[bruno]

What is the situation with this problem ?

I just build a nice application with a lot of reports that use the append to pdf scriptstep.

I copy the application from my standalone xp-machine, where everything works fantastic, to a win2003 server (just in a single user mode) and I have the discribed error 800 failure .

Will there be an update or is there a workaround for it ??