PDF Export Problems? Toggle Tagged PDF On and Off
In the last few days I’ve been playing around some the interactive features of InDesign. I created a few buttons with effects and text and because there’s no way to test these features within InDesign, I attempted to export a PDF with all of the appropriate settings: Acrobat 6 compatibility, Include Interactive Elements and Embed all Multimedia Content.
The result was nothing. No PDF and no error message generated. Generally, I enjoy a good mystery, but this one had me baffled.
After some testing and conferring with a few other folks, it became apparent that the combination of text and the bevel/emboss effect on the button was causing the issue. Sure enough, converting the text to outlines or getting rid of the effect resulting in a successful PDF export.
When I posted this information on the User to User forum, I was directed to a thread that discussed this issue. It turns out that the “fix” for this is toggle the Create Tagged PDF setting to whatever it wasn’t set to. I had it off so I enabled it and sure enough, the PDF exported successfully with text and effects on the button. This reminded me of an older issue with PDFs suffering from what I like to refer to as “bunched text syndrome” where a section of text is all pushed into a small area. The toggle trick usually works to fix that, too.
Wow, that is really trippy, Bob. Thanks for sharing that trick. It reminds me of some of the workarounds people are coming up with to fix the Mac nav services problem.
Or, how I always move the mouse cursor around the screen whenever something is taking longer than expected to process. My theory is that if the mouse cursor is moving, it distracts the computer so it will forget that it was about to crash on me. Hey, I know it sounds insane, but… well, whatever works.
I don’t know why you aren’t exporting all your PDFs (at least those that aren’t exclusively for printing) with tagging enabled. I’m also not sure why you’re surprised that tagged PDFs fix bunched text; tagging is XML and imposes structure on PDF, which is otherwise a mishmashed database of objects. It isn’t surprising that tagging resolves text order. It has to.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, Joe.
There are instances of turning off tagging that fixes problems just as there instances of turning it on.
Hey David, you’re not crazy, I do that all the time too. My reason is a little bit saner than yours though, I do it to make sure the computer is responding and not frozen. If the mouse is moving then so is the cpu, in my opinion.
The issue of tagged PDF is interesting, brings me back to a point I continually make. Where is the button that “exports to pdf as I’d expect it”?
What’s badly needed is a wysiwyg pdf setting. For instance, if I’m going through the bother of making rollover buttons for my InD document, it should be smart enough to know you want these elements to work once the pdf is made.
Also, it should be smart enough to smart out spot colours as you change them outside indesign via the ink manager. You set you PDF to convert spot colours to cmyk and it’s fine, you change the spot colour outside of that document and then the setting is lost for the pdf.
wysiwyg pdf would be awesome, I think.
Hmm, I wish I had read this two-three weeks ago! Then I had a *LOT* of crashes when generating PDFs with gazillions of hyperlinks — and what finally cured my woes, AFAIK, was simply to disable the “create tagged” which I had just mindlessly kept while I modified some built-in preset. I then resolved to stay totally away from enabling PDF tagging — but Bob seems to say that tagging-toggling might fix things. Sounds weird, but I might give it a shot sometime, so thanks, Bob — even if you were a few weeks late!
Addendum: I also discovered, when I had these PDF woes, that enabling tagging increases the PDF file size by a not negligible amount, so when I disabled this tagging (which is, to me, a quite useless feature) — I was pleasantly surprised to see substantially smaller PDFs. And no export crashes!
When I created pdfs in PageMaker, I could create a title and description that appeared in the pdf and was used by search engines online.
With InDesign, I can’t find this option. I must open the pdf itself and type in the title and description. When I am making changes at the last minute to an existing document, I sometimes forget to make the additional change in the pdf.
Is there a way to insert a title and description into the new pdf while in InDesign?
I’d really be grateful if someone can tell me that there is an easy solution.
Thank you!
Quite easy, Linda.
Open your file and use the file > file info command. Enter the information there.
I’m glad to read about pdf export problems here. My problem is that the pdfs that I sometimes create for others, can be seen perfectly on their screen but prints with missing letters in a random fashion.
Your solution of tagged pdf didnt work.
Any clue would be appreciated.
Estie: Are you creating PDFs directly with File > Export, or via the Print dialog (with Distiller)? One idea: Set the Subset Fonts setting to zero percent, so that the whole font is embedded instead of subset. If you use the Print dialog box, make sure Download PPD Fonts checkbox is selected in the Print dialog box.
Thanx, David, for your response. Of the 2 options you posted, the second one--using the Print Dialog > graphics > Fonts Download Complete and checking the PPD Fonts checkbox, provided the desired result.
Wow Bob! thanks!!! Adobe’s support are at times usless