[Solved] Writer crashes when I export it to PDF

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EdIsenberg
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[Solved] Writer crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by EdIsenberg »

I tried to FILE | EXPORT AS PDF my novel, and twice OOWriter has crashed. I have a screenshot of the PDF Export Settings plus 6 screenshots of the various error messages that were displayed during the recovery process. I think some of them are due to it trying to recover the temporary file that is created while working on an OOWriter document. It's my guess it lost that temporary document somehow. Luckily I saved the document before trying this, so I'm not in trouble.

I can't believe how much time I am spending on OOWriter instead of my novel. :( :crazy: I realize some of my problems are due to my not understanding various processes, but then again, I've been using OOWriter & OOCalc for many years, and have been able to write and correctly format 98% of my novel in it. If getting things like spacing, bulleted paragraphs and picture captions right isn't reasonably obvious to a fairly experienced (but admittedly not expert) user, then that says something about the UI, doesn't it?

Perhaps LibreOffice is better. If I can't get things going again I'll even have to consider the unthinkable. (I won't say the name since everyone knows what I'm referring to.)

[I'm sorry I sound so depressed. I'm becoming extremely worried I won't meet the deadline, which will cost me money. Given it isn't the novel itself that's delaying me, my frustration is getting out of hand. Again, I'm sorry to expose these emotions to all of you who are donating your time and knowledge to help me and so many other people use what, after all, is a major software program that itself is both free and created by generous people.]

Does anyone know a way to convert an ODT to PDF without using the internal FILE | EXPORT TO PDF process?

Anyway, here is the image showing the settings for the Export screen, plus the first 2 error messages out of 6. I suspect the error messages won't help. Hopefully, it's something about my export settings.
Saving FoP as PDF - SAVE OPTIONS - crashed immediately.jpg
Crash while opening FoP 0 of 5.jpg
Crash while opening FoP 1 of 5.jpg
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Tue Jul 11, 2017 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tagged [Solved].
Edward D. Isenberg
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EdIsenberg
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by EdIsenberg »

Crash while opening FoP 2 of 5.jpg
Crash while opening FoP 3 of 5.jpg
Crash while opening FoP 4 of 5.jpg
Edward D. Isenberg
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by EdIsenberg »

Crash while opening FoP 5 of 5.jpg
That's the last one. Why it says it was recovered but has an orange checkmark I don't know.

Ed
Edward D. Isenberg
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robleyd
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by robleyd »

I understand that Windows 10 may have a virtual PDF printer; if so you might consider trying that rather than the export function in AOO.
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RusselB
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by RusselB »

The orange check mark indicates that OpenOffice recognizes a later version of the file was created, but was not recoverable, but an earlier version was recoverable.
This is also stated (badly in my opinion) by the message "Original document recovered" opposed to "Successfully recovered".

As to your problem of exporting to PDF, in my experience having the PDF/A-1a option (on the first screen shot you posted) checked, has given me the best results for a PDF file.
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If you believe your problem has been resolved, please go to your first post in this topic, click the Edit button and add [Solved] to the beginning of the Subject line.
EdIsenberg
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by EdIsenberg »

You won't believe it.
Crashed while printing to MS PDF Printer.jpg
Edward D. Isenberg
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by John_Ha »

I have never experienced a crash while exporting to PDF despite having done so hundreds of times. That being said, your file appears to be big with almost 400 pages.

Try PrimpPDF the PDF printer. PDF Split and Merge can merge multiple PDFs into a single PDF file.

Q1. Have you diagnosed what is causing the crash? Do so by selecting the pages to export and repeat with different selections of pages until you identify what is causing the problem. It may just be that very big files don't get exported properly in which case, split the export and combine the PDFs. Can you send me the file for me to test - I have sent you a Private Message with my ID.

If this solves the problem, please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.
Last edited by John_Ha on Mon Jul 10, 2017 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by John_Ha »

Another question in addition to the one above. Q2. What is the exact error message that you get?

Is it Fatal Error. Bad Allocation? See [Issue] Fatal Error - Bad allocation and Comment 15 in Issue 125006 - Calc Consistently crashing, usually with "Fatal Error - Bad Allocation" where the same problem occurs with PDF files.

Note also that one reporter tracked it down to an image saved at 384 dpi resolution which is very high suggesting a large image file size.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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RoryOF
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Re: OOWriter crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by RoryOF »

For what it's worth, I've just made a PDF (Export as PDF) of a 33842 A5 (US Brochure equivalent) page plain text formatted file. This is just 9 million words and the PDF is 142 MB. The conversion took 3.5 hours on a computer of reasonable specification.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
EdIsenberg
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Re: Writer crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by EdIsenberg »

Of course, thank you all for your suggestions & questions.

Relating to AOO:
There was no error message. It simply crashed. As was shown by the images at the beginning of this thread, the file was left so that it wasn't completely recoverable.

Relating to LO:
I did get a warning message, shown below:
LO Crash while Saving FoP as PDF (Error Message).jpg
Happily, LibreOffice seems* to have successfully created the PDF. :D
I do have a remaining question: does anyone know how I find these transparent objects? I've checked the FIND and also the FIND AND REPLACE dialogue boxes but searching for transparencies is, not surprisingly, unavailable as an option. Unfortunately the S&R HELP button sends you to a page that says there is no such help.

Should I assume that the objects are images, or might they be things like Table of Contents or DRAW Objects?

* So far the PDF seems okay, but I have no idea if the printer will agree when it gets the file.

If you all tell me to ignore the problem I will, and will also mark this as SOLVED.
Edward D. Isenberg
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EdIsenberg
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Re: Writer crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by EdIsenberg »

I did some more checking looking for transparent objects. I have a number of images and all say they are NOT transparent. I have one drawing, which also says it isn't transparent even though it looks like it is. I deleted it and exported to PDF again, but hit the same errors. If you want to see that object as an image or for me to upload just that one page I will, but given its absence doesn't seem to fix the problem I assume that won't be necessary.

So I have no idea what object(s) are transparent.
Edward D. Isenberg
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Re: Writer crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by John_Ha »

Images (especially .PNG files) or Draw objects can be transparent. Search Help with transparent for more information.

The warning message says that transparency will be ignored and the image or object exported without transparency so it is most unlikely that transparency is the cause of the problem.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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Re: Writer crashes when I export it to PDF

Post by John_Ha »

A thought.

A bug in Writer allows the user to set a transparency value to an impossible "out of range" number like 123, where transparency should obviously be between 0 and 100 (0% and 100%). I wonder if the problem is that the PDF creator does not like this impossible value?
 Edit: Although I have seen this problem in the past when editing .doc files it looks like it has been fixed as I cannot now force a transparency value to be out of range. 
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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