Indesign won't export to pdf

[JKA@4153]

Hi everyone,

I've just upgraded to Indesign CS5. I've also downloaded the patch so that it's version 7.03.

When I try to export to pdf, I get an error that says: 1 problem was found with a background task: Failed to export an eps item on page A.

I get the same error when I try to export any file at all.

Anyone know why this is happening? It worked fine in CS4.

Appreciate any advice.

[Peter Spier]

Try putting a couple of random files together in a book and see if that will export. Books export to PDF in the foreground, so this should tell us if the problem is in the background task itself, or something else.

If it's happening with all files, my instinct is it is either corrupt preferences, a conflict with some other software, or a damaged instalation of ID. I think som Firefox plugins have been implicated in odd behavior in ID, and of course third party ID plugins are always suspect. Try cloing all other apps and see if it makes a difference, and deactvate any optional plugins, including any font auto-activation. If that doesn't work, the next thing I would try is Replace Your Preferences, followed by a reinstall as a last resort.

Have you ever been able to use the background export? Can you export to .idml instead? What's the OS?

[JKA@4153]

Thanks for the detailed reply,

You know I just tried verifying and then repairing the permissions on my mac (10.5.8) and this seemed to have fixed the problem.

Not sure why it helped though.

[Kevin_Spear]

I had a similar problem happen to me. A 32 page booklet wouldn't export to pdf. When I exported it, it appeared InDesign began generating the file, then it disappered.

I discovered something was wrong with some of the art when I exported sections of the book and discovered it was a specific range of pages that wouldn't export.

I zeroed it in on some older Adobe Illustrator, EPS files that were part of a reprint. When I resaved those files as native Adobe Illustrator files, this solved the problem.

So if you are working with files that use older EPS files, try resaving them to native Illustrator or Photoshop files.

[Willi Adelberger]

Kevin*Spear schrieb:

…

So if you are working with files that use older EPS files, try resaving them to native Illustrator or Photoshop files.

No and never.

Illustrator is not a common EPS and PDF editor. Only files created in Illustrator with Illustrator's compatibility can be opened in Illustrator, none others.

As it is correct to avoid EPS, yo can convert them in Distiller to convert them into PDFs. Better is, if they come from Illustrator to save them as PDF.

[Vrieze]

I've had the same issue. Indesign was linking to a file that was on my skydrive. The file was only available online.

So the link was there, the file not.

[towsonval]

I have figured out the problem with this (1 problem (1 failure) was found with background task!

Check all the images that are placed in the document -  especially images placed from google.

Don't copy an image or drag straight to the job. Be sure to download image and open in ps are resave a shorter name!

[Willi Adelberger]

Opening and resaving an image in Photoshop can cause corruption or reduce quality. If you want only to rename them, rename them in Bridge. Only images causing problems should be opened and saved again.

[lynx-nobull]

Make sure you have full access to the folder you are trying to save into. I know it seems obvious but someone else had created a folder across the network onto my machine into which I was trying to save and the only warning I got from InDesign was error with background task.

[normp31715097]

I had a similar problem.

Files created with PDF Exchange, with watermarks, and linked into InDesign would cause the export to fail.

My solution was to create files with watermarks using PDFTools instead.

[jesúsd14345433 · Accepted solution]

Hi, I tried many tricks without results. At the end, I transformed the images from jpg and png to tiff and eureka! It works.

Good luck!

[sophia.llamas]

I have Indesign CC 2018 and I was trying to export a 20 page document that contained various graphics, text, and images. I used the delete and check method where I deleted random pages and attempted saving the document as a PDF and eventually found that it would only save correctly when the JPG images taken on my phone were removed. To solve this, I read this forum and found that some people had luck when saving images as tif files.

This is what worked for me:

~ Open every image in photoshop

~ Ctrl + Shift + S (save as) TIFF

~ (I actually made a separate folder for all my new images so they didn't get mixed with the old jpg ones)

~ Go to your Indesign doc

~ Open Links pannel

~ Select every JPG link (for me it was all of my links)

~ right click - "Relink..."

~ A window will open and have you select a new image to replace the current ones. Go to your TIFF folder and select the tif replacement for each image. It will place them in the exact same place so you dont have to re-place or re-crop them in your document! (saves a lot of time)

~ Then you should be able to export it as a PDF!

Disclaimer: mine still gave an error message upon saving even after replacing the jpg images into tif images BUT the document still saved and opens correctly.

Good luck!