Export Error Message (sometimes)

[DSH]

I am having trouble exporting pdf files from Publisher files and get the following error message. Some files, however, have exported and others not. There seems to be no consistent pattern to those that export and those that do not. Efforts to find a solution online have been unsuccessful. I have been able to use the "save to PDF" function in the print dialog box, but it creates a very large file. Ditto for using "PDF flatten" in the export options, except that the file is even larger. (For example, a 1.7mb file in Publisher exported through the "save to PDF" function at 72mb, and 293 mb when using "PDF flatten." Obviously, both are too large to attach to an email. I have checked the "preflight" function and made sure no "red dots" exist; there appears to be nothing in preflight to prevent the export. The error message is the same for each file where the export failed.

One thing I have noticed is that the "calculating size" in the export dialog box never completes calculating a size for the files that will not export, but does calculate a size on those that do export.

Help, please. This issue is hindering completion of the design for two books. Thanks.

[Old Bruce]

Do you have many pictures in the document, are they embedded or linked, is the document on the computer's hard drive or a networked drive or in the cloud, are there any pictures in the file stored in the cloud.

Storing things in the cloud or on some networked hard drives cause problems. 

The size of the photos or drawings can cause problems, when I say size I mean file size in Bytes and the original 'paper' dimensions. Some files are cropped and include enormous not visible areas which gum up the works.

[DSH]

No. One book has no photos and one has two small grayscale photos which were cropped and sized in Affinity Photo prior to being placed as linked files. The two grayscale photos are not large. Nothing is stored in the cloud. Otherwise, the books are text.

A poster that did export properly has 15 small color photos, again cropped and sized in Affinity Photo, and numerous cmyk color shapes used in the design.

All files are in the same folder on the hard drive of a 27-inch iMac running High Sierra OS. It has 8gb of RAM and almost 800gb of open storage on the hard drive. (I am a retired graphic designer who has worked with PageMaker, Quark Xpress and InDesign prior to retiring. Affinity Publisher was purchased as a replacement for InDesign, Affinity Designer as a replacement for Illustrator and Affinity Photo to replace Photoshop.)

[walt.farrell]

You might try enabling the PDFLib logging and checking the log file to see if it provides an answer: