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An error occurred while exporting to: [path name}


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I have had this issue for several iterations of Affinity Photo: 

I will work on images and after 5 or 6 I will get the follow error: An error occurred while exporting to...

I am working on a MacBook Pro 2019 with 32gig memory, however this issue occurred on my previous MacBook Pro. I am exporting to external drives, but it makes no difference if I try to export locally. Also, I am unable to just save the file as I get a variation of the same message. Once I close Affinity Photo and reopen it the problem disappears...until I edit 5 or 6 images and then it reappears. 

I can't imagine I'm the only one suffering from this issue, however searching the forums has not yielded an answer. This is incredibly frustrating and really affects my workflow. 

Can anybody help?

 

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Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Where did you purchase your copy of Photo? Mac App Store, or Serif Affinity Store.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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The code for the applications is nearly identical between the applications whether you purchase from the Mac Apps Store or from Serif directly. I think that the Help menu when you purchase from Serif has a "Check for Updates" entry that is not there if you purchased from the MAS, but beyond that I'm not aware of any differences. (On the other hand, I don't use a Mac, so all my knowledge of this is from reading forum posts.)

Where there are more significant differences, though, is with limitations that MacOS puts on applications that are purchased from the MAS. They run in a sandboxed environment, with (I think) limitations on what directories they can access without getting extra permission, and they run with limitations on the number of files they can have open, which includes installed fonts. So, sometimes, a failure to access a file or directory can happen because the application has too many files open already (including installed fonts).

So, in theory, with an application from the MAS you might see failures you wouldn't see in an application from Serif (or other source) if it's running right on the edge of exceeding that limit. I didn't mention all that initially as I thought it was an unlikely possibility. And in any case knowing where the application was purchased is sometimes important, so it's good information to have for the Serif staff when they look at your topic.

But, if you have a ton of fonts installed, you might try removing or inactivating some of them, and see if the problem disappears :)

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I think that the Help menu when you purchase from Serif has a "Check for Updates" entry that is not there if you purchased from the MAS ...

In the Mac versions purchased from the Affinity Store, the "Check for Updates" item is on the first menu to the right of the Apple menu item, named for the Affinity app that is currently frontmost (so for AP it would be the "Affinity Photo" menu).

In the Mac OS the number of files that can be open at one time is limited on both a per process & total basis, both of which are high enough that it is unlikely that any app will reach that limit.

There may be some reason the Mac OS or an app will not let a file be saved to a particular directory, but this has little to do with an app running in a sandbox. Most often it is because the directory is one the user does not have sufficient access rights to write to.

I have seen a few posts from Mac users complaining of this or a similar error occurring in an Affinity app but unfortunately I do not know how this was resolved. In some of these reports it was mentioned that only one Affinity app has this problem while others running on the same Mac did not.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
A
ll 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I wouldn't think this is an issue of files open at one time. First only one file is open at a time and it's takes 5 to 7 times to get the error message. 

Also, I don't think permissions are an issue. I am saving the files to an external hard drive which again successfully works 5 to 7 times before getting the error. Once I get the error if I try to save to another external or local folder I still get the same message.

In searching the forum I've seen variations of this issue with those trying to save their files to PDF. For the record I'm opening files that are either .JPG or Nikon Raw and saving to TIFF. 

Thanks for your thoughts.

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On 9/2/2020 at 9:47 AM, Sigerson said:

I can't believe that I'm the only Mac user to have this issue. An issue that has stayed with me across different Hardware (2 Macbook Pro's).

I am going to assume that the external hard drives are the same from the old MacBook to the new MacBook. I will again assume that the problem is with the external hard drive(s). I cannot even remember all the various flavours of formatting for external hard drives so I won't/can't suggest one over another. The other thing which comes to mind is how often the drives go to sleep and whether they are connected by a cable or are on a network accessible via wifi.

 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Thanks for responding Bruce,

All external HD's are formatted by myself as Mac Journaled and they are attached via their own cables. One drive is USB3 and the other is a Solid State Drive and only the usb3 drive was used with the older Macbook Pro. I will follow up with the drives going to sleep. What's interesting is that I have no issue opening a file just exporting a file. In this case the files are opened on the USB3 Drive and saved to the Solid State Drive. Again it happens every 5th to 7th file I edit.

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On 9/2/2020 at 6:47 PM, Sigerson said:

I can't believe that I'm the only Mac user to have this issue. An issue that has stayed with me across different Hardware (2 Macbook Pro's).

The error message was reported a few times, caused by a font issue with older Postscript (Type 1) font files. So, in case you have text, use older font files and export to PDF you may try this workaround: convert the text to curves, either before export or via the according option in Export > More.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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20 minutes ago, Sigerson said:

I'm a bit surprised that someone from Serif hasn't responded.

That's not surprising if you consider the number of posts to be read in all ~10 Affinity bug forums, not to mention the ~10 questions and feedback forums. According to a bunch of existing reports + moderator's comments they are aware of issues with external drives, while it's not a general issue and not appearing for every user, which might make it more difficult to reproduce > solve it.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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