Failed to Export the PDF file

[ppsadmin12]

I have a 500 page Indesign file that I would like to convert to a PDF, however, I am receiving "Failed to Export the PDF file".  Does anyone have a resolution to this problem?

[PrintFusion45]

There is no one step solution to this. However, you have to break the InDesign file into multiple parts and then try to export to PDF and test which part is having issues. It is possible that a couple of spreads in your entire 500 paged document is corrupt or behaving incorrectly.

[ppsadmin12]

So am I able to combine them into one PDF and not lose my interactive feature.

[PrintFusion45]

Breaking the InDesign file into multiple parts is just the part of the test to isolate the faulty page. After you have found it out, you need to check for things like very high resolution images scaled to a small frame, corrupt fonts, etc. Fix the page individually and then combine it back into the main InDesign file. Then export to interactive PDF.

[Peter Spier]

shnath wrote:

Breaking the InDesign file into multiple parts is just the part of the test to isolate the faulty page. After you have found it out, you need to check for things like very high resolution images scaled to a small frame, corrupt fonts, etc. Fix the page individually and then combine it back into the main InDesign file. Then export to interactive PDF.

Except sometimes there really is nothing wrong and breaking the PDF into chunks reduces the demand on system resources enough to allow all of the pages to export. It isn't all that uncommon to see PDFs fail with large page counts and lots of complex graphics, but they work fine when divided in half.

You can recombine the chunks using Acrobat Pro, but I don't do interactive content in my own work, so I don't know how it will be affected. I would think that 'self-contained' sorts of interactivity would be fine, but internal hyperlinks or cross-references that refer to ssomething in another chunk might break.

[ppsadmin12]

This is really not good at all...

[Peter Spier]

When was the last time you did a Save AS on your file to clear out the junk?

What are the system specs for your computer? What's in this 500 page file? I've done books about that large with hundreds of photos, but photos use far fewer system resources than vector objects, espcially if linked, so it's hard to say whether you have a specific porblem or if your file just grew to the point that your system can no longer handle the export in one piece. We see that happen quite a lot here.

I would certainly try dividing the file in half to see what happens, and if it works try recombining in Acrobat Pro to test a known interactive componenet that you think might not have survived. If only half of the file exports that's a prety good indicator of an actual problem that you can isolate by continuing to divide the failing section in half until you find a page, then remove objects half at a time the same way. I'd to the divide and conquer analysis on a copy of the file for safety.

[ppsadmin12]

I did the "save as" command about 5 minutes ago.

System Specs

OS - Windows 7 Pro.

Processor

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU

E4600  @ 2.40GHz, 2394 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM)

4.00 GB

500 page document

Includes powerpoints that have been converted to PDFs.  The powerpoints have text and/or graphics embedded.  The indesign file 130 MB with all 500 pages.

I attempted to divde the file in half but it stopped at a certain page number. So I have begun to divide the section where it stopped into another section. 

[Peter Spier]

4 gigs isn't a lot of RAM for running Win 7. Is this a 32- or 64-bit version?

It wouldn't surprise me if you find a problem with one of the powerpoints.

[ppsadmin12]

32 GB. 

[Peter Spier]

OK, if it's the 32-bit version it isn't even using all of the 4 GB of RAM installed. ID itself is only a 32-bit program, so it can't utilize huge amounts of RAM, either, but if you're sharing waht you have with the OS and a bunch of open apps it can start to slow things down. Closing other open programs might help.

[ppsadmin12]

Yeah I did that..I knew other apps/programs would eat up resources.  I have just exported the table of contents and merged all PDFs into one file and created hyperlinks within Acrobat Pro X.  Have you ever encountered this problem before.  Is it best practices to not embed large PDFs with graphic into one ID file and attempt to export as a file.

[Peter Spier]

In my opinion it is best practice to use linked files rather than embedding anything, but you may not have the choice. Making a PDF autoamtically embeds everything you need to view the file, for example, and that may be the only way to get waht you need fromm another application into ID.

[ppsadmin12]

Well I see it automatically created the table of contents that will show up on the Android tablet that will house this document for training purposes. 

[Joel Cherney]

500 page document

Includes powerpoints that have been converted to PDFs.

Strictly anecdotal evidence, but I've found that PDFs out of PowerPoint can be troublesome when placed into ID; I often use PPT -> PDF -> PNG (or TIFF when going into print). 

edit: argh, embed =/= place

[jackbrannen]

I have a similar problem, but my document has NO placed or embedded graphics at all. None.

Also, the problem occurs sporadically. I can try to export pages 1–10 (for example), and it will fail twice in a row and then work twice in a row.

I already tried extracting all the text and creating an entirely new INDD file with built-from-scratch masters (the text and object styles, however, did get copied over), so it's obviously not my FILE that's the problem. I'm currently troubleshooting my fonts, but if anyone else has any bright ideas, they'd sure be welcome at this point.