*** From the Archives ***
This article is from June 20, 2008, and is no longer current.
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.
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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.
My problem is that some of my InDesign files will not export as a JPG. How can I solve that problem?
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
Slightly different problem to Estie:
I am creating PDFs to be sent by email and to be viewed online. I am using the [smallest file size] setting. I am not using any transparency in the files. The type is distorting/corrupting in some places. In places the type displays crisp and clean and in other places it is fuzzy and distorted although the type is same font, same style sheet and from same original word docs.
Help!
I am having similar problems. InDesign CS4 on a MacBook Pro (Penryn, early 2008) Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM.
ONE particular file is unable to export to PDF. A different file I can export okay. I think it has to do with fonts. The un-exportable file had some missing fonts. I added them to my system Library/fonts. They show up fine and ID says there are no errors. But I think the whole problem came when I added those fonts. I tried the stuff mentioned at https://creativepro.com/pdf-export-problems-toggle-tagged-pdf-on-and-off.php and it didn’t help either. I’d love to resolve this issue. Interestingly enough, I had the identical file on CS3 on a PC and it did the same thing (I also had to add fonts there). I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that the font I added is called OptimaLT and one of the essential Mac fonts is Optima (.dfont). I guess not, though, since the PC is giving me the same problem.
Any help would be appreciated!
I am in the digital print business and we are seeing files coming out of our Prepress department that once ripped on the front end of our press are a different size than the original pdf. Could this be from a “tag” causing the rip to interpret the pdf at the incorrect size?
Just a side note here. I have just come back from DC where I learned that the “tagged PDF” function of InDesign is pretty abysmal. While it does make a tagged PDF, the resulting PDF does NOT comply with strict accessibility standard.
In fact, the expert I talked to who works for the Social Security administration told me that she normally has to trash most of the tagging and start from scratch in Acrobat.
XML doesn’t help either. Basically the problem is that InDesign or Acrobat doesn’t honor the tagging that may be in place other than – and tags and a few others. It is a crime that Adobe hasn’t addressed this issue before now.
So, don’t waste a lot of time applying XML tags to your stories expecting them to be 508 compliant, because they are not! And, you will have to spend a great deal of more time in Acrobat fixing it anyway.
Sorry, I read my post and realized that my tag names didn’t make it through the filter.
The tags that InDesign/Acrobat pass through successfully include [h1]-[h6] and [p] and a few others. Most tags are actually ignored.
Additionally, the structure of your document make be thrown off any drop caps and other inline elements, making the file “in”-accessible to Reading applications and Braille machines.
Answering the RIP question: exporting to PDF will usually result in a larger PDF. This has to do with a lot of extra content being adding during export that isn’t added when you “print” to PDF.
Tags, layers and interactive elements are among the “added” content that can be included when you export. Printing to PDF flattens the file and strips out much of the other content.
We have seen as much as a 5 fold size difference.
@Jim: Yes, Vicky has unearthed many bugs in the tagged pdf export situation, but it is not as dire as you make it out to be. Check out the adobe white paper that I helped write on accessibility issues and exporting tagged text.
Thanks for the link to the white paper. I will definitely read it soon. But it still doesn’t change the fact that feature is basically broken. If you spend the time to tag and organize your content in InDesign to produce the accessible document, what possible excuse is there for it being screwed up in Acrobat?
Using XML you can create wonderful structures that are exactly what you need or want in an accessible document. You can export these to HTML using an XSLT and Acrobat will honor all those HTML elements and their structure. But for some reason when you go straight into PDF from InDesign you lose much of that work.
It is very frustrating.
I have encountered a problem with Export to PDF. The InDesign page A4 produces an Export to PDF of 5mm larger than A4.
This is with crop marks selected and 3mm bleed
Any light to shed on this problem would be gratefully received.
Hi
I have a problem with an CS4 Indesign file.
It simple wont export to a PDF. It just fails without any error messages.
Can anyone help me asap?
Mike
I accidently erased all my inDesign documents and bought an expensive program to convert from pdf to indesign, which it does, but comes up with the same defects as when you convert with the Adobe program from pdf to word. Is there any way to improve this? Or do I have to fix each first letter in a sentence that came out with lower case and each hyphen in the wrong place in the whole document ( it is 300 pages)?
Hoping for a better way.
Hi, I had a similar problem with a very large file to generate to PDF for print (InDesign just did not create the PDF without any arror messages). I first thought there was a problem with the size, but the cause was a linked JPG-file which was saved with the ‘progressive’ option selected instead of ‘baseline’. When I saved the JPG with the ‘baseline’ option selected, I had no problem generating the PDF.
I am having problems creating a pdf – using InDesign (which has in the past ALWAYS done this, and now won’t at all). I have tried turning tagged PDF on and off. Don’t know what to do now – this is all (44pp) laid out and needs to get to the printer in PDF format, asap!
Mac os 10.10, indesign CS5.5 (I know, both are on the old side, but they’re what I’ve got)
Can anyone help??
Did you get an error message?
If yes, I cannot help you, but maybe you will find your answer somewhere in the replies (in case you did not read them already).
If not, did you use linked jpg files in your document?
If so, try to save all the files again, making sure they are saved with the ‘baseline’ file format option selected: jpg-files saved in ‘progressive’ file format can stop InDesign from exporting to PDF without showing any error messages.
Thanks for yr reply! In the end it worked, but other problems to work out now …anyway, I appreciate your help!
I finnaly solved this, or found the problem. For me, the problem (shouldn’t really be a problem though …) was I had some groups of texts and objects, consisiting of many subgroups. When I ungroped those everything worked fine.
So, let’s add “Complex groupings” to the list of things to look for in the indesign file, in addition to “effects”.
i also have the prob of not making pdf from indesign file..i checked each page and started to make pdf…then in 50 page file, 16th page i found a different font which i used first time (frutiger)..i changed the font and tried pdf exporting. After tht successfully the pdf generated…i think, this way also you people can try…
you’re AMAZING. HJust been tearing my hair out and this quick fix, worked!! thankyou thankyou
omg this worked, thanks :)