[Solved] Office Draw Keeps Crashing

[ChrisP]

Hi

I don't know too much about computers etc but thought I would post here in the hope someone can help me. I am having a problem with office draw which keeps crashing - and I don't think it's my computer because I have tried 3 different computers (including a new one just brought last week -8gb ram).

I think maybe my files are too large - sometimes office draw just crashes when I am working on them but my big problem is that it seems to happen a lot when I am trying to export the files into PDF. Has anyone else had this problem? After multiple tries I finally managed to convert one of my files into pdf but haven't had any luck with another file, it just crashes in the middle of the export process. The file I am trying to export is just 16 pages, with a few pictures and text etc on some of the pages - I wouldn't of thought this would of been to large - maybe I am doing something wrong?

Please Help - and thanks in advance .

[RoryOF]

What is the resolution of your pictures?

[ChrisP]

Thanks for your quick reply, well whole document is 3.4mb - thought that would of been ok? um - not 100% sure how to check res of pics - but just had an idea to change them all to GIFs in pain - do you think that will work? might take awhile tho.

[RoryOF]

That overall size should be OK. Try also using JPG format.

[ChrisP]

Ahh, thanks - think it was just the file size. Reduced some pictures quality until file size was only 2.5mb (down from 3.5mb) and it worked. Was hoping to do some bigger files in the future though so will be interesting to see how they go

[RoryOF]

As a rule of thumb, final printed resolution need not normally exceed 150-210 dpi for continuous tone images (photographs) as the eye, in normal viewing conditions does not resolve more than that. Graphics images (line art) should be 300 dpi, preferable 600 dpi. Posters which are intended to be viewed from a distance can use coarser resolutions. One can gain information on this by studying the norms of old-fashioned print output.

Edit: The format of choice for images to be inserted into OO is PNG. Using JPG for photo images is helpful in reducing file size. Above all, backup, backup, backup. As a file becomes more complex it is worth backing up very regularly - perhaps even after every image insertion.

[ChrisP]

Ok, great, thanks for your help

[ChrisP]

Hi Again. Just an update. It's still happening, even with smaller files - have one 14 page office draw document which I want to convert to PDF, (1650Kb) and it still keeps crashing when I export, have tried 3 different computers with different documents as well and quite often these crashes keep happening, any advice (will continue to try to keep reducing quality but don't really want to go much further) - is office draw not suppose to done with multi-pages? Thanks in advance

[RoryOF]

Have you adjusted the settings under /Tools /Options /OpenOffice : Memory? Increase Graphics Cache to 256 MB (max) and adjust the other settings as you think fit. Probably best to reduce the number of undo steps - who can remember 100 steps? I normally set this to 10 or 20 steps.

I can't say that this will help, but it won't hurt.

[acknak]

I've never run into a problem exporting from OO Draw to pdf, even with drawings having many pages and lots of images.

It would help if you could try the file on some other system; if you could upload the file somewhere we could try it, that would at least tell us whether the problem is specific to your file, or to OO Draw, or something else.

[ChrisP]

Hey guys, thanks again, I changed the memory as Rory said and then it worked (was on 20mb before). Cheers.