Affinity Publisher crashes when exporting pdf - Mac Mini M1 - exports other formats

[mrg67]

When I try and export as pdf - Affinity Publisher crashes. Not an issue if I wish to export in other formats - tried psd and png and worked ok - but need to export as a pdf. Tried shutdown and restart, save as and also ctrl start and cleared all. Help please!

I am new to mac os and to affinity.

[Johnny Boxer]

I have the same problem, also a Macbook M1. By the way, the same thing when exporting as PDF in the Designer. Ask for quick help or improvement.

[Jon P]

We are aware of this, thanks for making sure it was reported

[garrettm30]

3 hours ago, Johnny Boxer said:

Ask for quick help or improvement.

As a workaround, someone has suggested that you can start Publisher via Rosetta to get your export to succeed. Not having an M1 Mac, I can't confirm myself. If you are unfamiliar with how to do that, here are some instructions I have found:

https://www.howtogeek.com/702982/how-to-launch-the-intel-version-of-a-universal-mac-app-on-apple-silicon/

Also, I would assume that you would get reduced performance if you do that, so you probably would not want to leave Publisher configured for emulation in Rosetta.

Edit: I think this was the post I was referring to, and I think I may have inaccurately remembered. 1.8.4 (which is before native support for the M1) was the solution that was tried. I do not know if 1.8.6 is released as a universal binary, and if it is, whether it would solve the problem, but I would give it a try. If it is a universal binary, you should be able to check the "Open using Rosetta" checkbox.

If this doesn't work, I will edit out this post for the sake of not leading astray other members of the community.

On 12/13/2020 at 2:27 PM, carl varley said:

I have just checked the last intel version 1.8.4 running under Rosetta on a mini m1 and that exports PDFs perfectly.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by garrettm30
Correction/clarification

[Dz9r]

Same issue here with 1.8.6 on MacBook Pro M1. Have tried opening in Rosetta, but it still does not export PDF.

[Dz9r]

I found a workaround;
- export to EPS
- open individual pages in Preview and export as PDF.
- Then use Preview to combine all of the pages.

Note: I have only tried this on a PDF for the client to approve, not sure if this will work for a press ready file.

[uburoibob]

FWIW, I am using a MacMini M1 with 16gig RAM. Opened and IDML file, which it imported perfectly, and kicked out a PDF, without crashing. PDF looks fine. I BELIEVE I did that both before and after upgrading to 11.1.

BTW, this is my first experience with Affinity. Long time Adobe user looking at what else there is out there. Loving it so far!

 

EDIT: I tried another document, this 78 pages brought in from InDesign ML and it crashed when I went to make a PDF.

Edited December 18, 2020 by uburoibob

[SarahB]

Edited - nope, Publisher is crashing when I export to eps too. Jpg seems to be OK

I have the same problem on my Macbook Pro. I'll try Dz9r's solution since I am just trying to export single page invoices to finish my end-of-year accounting, but I see Affinity said three days ago that they are aware of the problem, has there been an update since?

[Jon P]

@SarahB Is that in a new document too? Can you post a crash report to see if it's the same issue

[wtrmlnjuc]

M1 Mini on Big Sur 11.1. Same issue happening here. Editing works fine, but only crashes when trying to export to PDF. 

M1-Publisher-CrashLog.rtf

[erikmh]

I’m hitting this too, on a new M1 MacBook Pro. But there is an easy workaround: just use the Mac’s standard “Print to PDF” function:

1. Choose “Print” from the “File” menu.
2. In the Print dialog box, click on the “PDF” drop-down menu.
3. Select “Save as PDF.”
4. Choose a location to save your exported file, and name it.

[Miller Krause]

I'm having this same problem on an M1 MacBook Pro, but only for certain files that contain graphics: I cannot reproduce it on a new file, nor does it seem to happen to existing files that contain no graphics.

In the Apple crash report, the following seems relevant:

Assertion failed: (sizeof(unsigned long)==SIZEOF_UNSIGNED_LONG), function pdf_TIFFClientOpen, file /Users/awhitehouse/Affinity2/Persona/Libraries/libpdflib/libs/tiff/tif_open.c, line 123.

 

[laROQUE]

Just want to chime in with the same issue: M1 MacBook Air and brand new to Publisher. I'd been going through the tutorials and was quite excited...until this happened. As soon as I click PDF in the Export panel, the app crashes. I can confirm however that launching in Rosetta fixes the problem—so at least there's a workaround.

[jmwellborn]

Welcome to the Forums @laROQUE☺️  I have just tried exporting from Publisher to PDF using the (for Print) option on my Macbook Pro with Big Sur and the M1 chip (see specs below) and have had no difficulty at all.  The first time I opened an existing PDF document with several pages of text and images in Publisher, fiddled with it, then exported it as a new PDF (for Print) with the Area set at All Pages.  Worked perfectly.  The second time I created a New document, inserted some text only, and exported it as a PDF (for Print) with the Area set at All Spreads.  Worked perfectly.   I am using Publisher v. 1.8.6.  I did not launch Rosetta.  

[Patrick Connor]

@laROQUE

This PDF export problem on M1 Mac's has been solved in the 1.9.0 betas which are at the release candidate stage and will be released very soon

[laROQUE]

@jmwellborn Oops...just seeing this. Thx for the welcome   
Actually after exporting through Rosetta I tried again and this time, with PDF export already selected, it worked. The app was previously crashing when I clicked on the PDF option.

[Jenncm]

Just upgraded it now running 1.10 and its started crashing, had no problems before

[sommersethdesign]

Hi everyone. I had the same issue yesterday. Even repurchased the app (this time from Apple Mac Appstore) to see if it could resolve it, removed the old installation. Same issues. Crashed on export. Had to enable "rosetta" when opening the app to allow export. This threw me some memory issues (simple four pager) even tho I have a maxed out Macbook Pro Max 64GB of ram. Hope Affinity optimizes this for M1 so emulating in Rosetta is not needed (performance is quite different).

EDIT: Started crashing on export on beta as well... Had to do "a rosetta" again.

Cheers,

Tom