Receiving Error "A Number Is Out of Range" in Acrobat 8.1.2 and 7.0

[_Evan_O_Keefe_]

I create mapbooks for the county I work at using ESRI's ArcMap ArcEditor. Once the book is done I convert it to PDF so that officers, fire fighters, etc. can open it on their laptops. Recently I started receiving the error "A Number is Out of Range" when I finish combining the PDF files into a binder. The error persists anytime I change pages and I have to click OK several times before it goes away. This becomes a problem for emergency management when their trying to search a road, plus it is also very annoying. Does anyone know how to get around this? It didn't use to do this. I thought maybe it was the fonts I was using, so I changed most of them to Arial and Times New Roman, yet it still persists, but seems slightly better. I cannot find anything on Adobes website about A Number is Out of Range. Also, I am using Acrobat Professional 8.1.2 and have also tried Professional 7.0. I'm running Windows XP. I have also tried reverting back to old versions of ArcMap and also the mapbook software MapLogic, but nothing helps. Any help would greatly be appreciated.

[_Roger_Mac_]

Hi Evan,

I've encountered the same error while trying to export from ArcMap. In my case I believe that the problem is coming from fonts I'm using (I have custom fonts I created). Your problem might be coming from a line symbol that uses a TTF font so changing all the fonts to Arial and TNR might not solve the problem. You might need to look at line symbol properties. The workaround I'm using is to open the problematic PDF in Acrobat (I'm also using version eight) and then export the map to a .PS file (File->Export->Postscript->Postscript) and then open the Postscript file in Acrobat where it automatically converts the file to a PDF upon opening the file. The error message disappears and all my fonts appear OK.

Roger

[_Evan_O_Keefe_]

Hi Roger,

I appreciate you responding back. I did find out that the problem was from custom fonts downloaded off the internet. It works fine with all the ESRI symbology, but not with other custom font sets. So I did resort to changing to the usual windows fonts. Again, thanks for your help.

Evan

[octechwriter]

I'm getting this error also, and I don't think it's a font issue. Here's my situation.

I created a 144-page manual in Adobe FrameMaker 8.0 using the same template and fonts that I have used in several other large manuals. I saved the manual as a PDF using Acrobat 3D 8.0, and is get the mind-numbingly vague error "A number is out of range." I didn't get this error in previous versions of this manual, nor do I get this error with the other manuals on which I am currently working. I had inserted some EPS technical drawings, so I opened all of them in Illustrator CS3 and Created Outlines for any text that appeared in the illustrations.

After two days of replacing all of the fonts, optomizing PDFs, and distilling, distilling, and distilling again, I was not able to get rid of this message using Acrobat. I finally pulled out my MacBook Pro, opened the PDF manual using Preview, saved the PDF under a different name (no need to apply a Quartz filter), and (abracadabra!) the vague error message is gone!

Fonts may be one cause of the annoyingly vague "A number is out of range" error, but they are not the only one. And with such informative error messages as that, I doubt I'll ever know what is really wrong with my PDF.

Cheers!
Michael Opsteegh

[_Russ_Jones_]

Hi

This may be of no help whatsoever but;

We used to get this error quite a bit when trying to print or scroll through one particular clients documents.

After having slowly deleted several pages and then 'saving as' [NOT 'save'] we eventually located the offending pages.

The 'number out of range' problem turned out to be caused by a photo that had been saved as 16 bit instead of 8 bit. When we opened them in Photoshop and saved them back down as 8 bit the problem went away.

Perhaps that may help.

Russ Jones

[Jeannie Ly]

Thank you, that helped a lot.

I'm using Acrobat 9 Pro and I was also experiencing the same problem.

I was trying to merge my .ai files together, but I kept getting the message. I went back to my .jpeg files that were embedded in the .ai files and changed the .jpeg files into .png files and it worked! And to top that all off, .png files were much smaller than .jpeg!

[octechwriter]

Russ,

That's an interesting observation. I'll have go back and check my graphics files to investigate. It's nice to know that the depth of graphics is a possible cause of this error.

Cheers!
Michael

[_Marge_]

We upload quarterly newsletters to our HOA website using pdf files. We have recently started getting this same error. What is interesting is our residents using Foxit can view the file with no problem. It's definitely an issue with Acrobat.

[_Sue_McNaughtan_]

I had also been having the "number is out of range" error when trying to delete pages from an existing pdf which contains text pages, charts, etc, combined from various sources. The problem seemed to be caused by pages which were originally huge charts (petroleum well logs). I am using Acrobat Professional v8.1.0.

Thanks to Roger Mac's suggestion on Apr 11, 2008, I opened the pdf then did a SaveAs a postscript file, then opened that postscript file in Acrobat during which process it was automatically converted to a pdf. Success!! I can now delete the offending pages!

Good luck folks.