Can no longer export my Affinity Publisher Document as a PDF

[NAK]

Hello!

I have been using Affinity Publisher for a few years to create a quick reference catalog for our sales team to identify parts and assemblies when they are talking to customers on the phone.  I update it and export it as a PDF every few months for everyone to share.  For some reason I am no longer able to do the export.  It gives me an error message every time I try.  My document has grown quite large but it has worked every time in the past.  Any suggestions?

[thomaso]

Hi @NAK,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

The "Estimated File Size: Calculating…" not finishing indicates a certain spot in the .afpub is stopping the process. This can be a placed resource for instance (e.g. an image or a placed document). If you don't have a clue what element can cause issues you could try to export the .afpub partially (in certain page ranges) to narrow down a possibly culprit.

Another option could be to use a different export setting, e.g. "Rasterise: Everything" or "Nothing" and/or "Embed Fonts: Text as Curves" or "No fonts".

Alternatively you could upload the .afpub to the forum for inspection by the community or request a moderator for offering a 'private' upload link.

[NathanC]

Hi @NAK welcome to the forums,

If you're not able to find the problem following thomaso's suggestions feel free to upload it to the below private dropbox link so we can investigate further. 🙂

https://www.dropbox.com/request/T3RyyMgF8qjpXuhRAr7K

Additionally, could you provide us with a screenshot of your PDF export settings under 'More...'?

Many thanks.

[NAK]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:19 PM, thomaso said:

Hi @NAK,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

The "Estimated File Size: Calculating…" not finishing indicates a certain spot in the .afpub is stopping the process. This can be a placed resource for instance (e.g. an image or a placed document). If you don't have a clue what element can cause issues you could try to export the .afpub partially (in certain page ranges) to narrow down a possibly culprit.

Another option could be to use a different export setting, e.g. "Rasterise: Everything" or "Nothing" and/or "Embed Fonts: Text as Curves" or "No fonts".

Alternatively you could upload the .afpub to the forum for inspection by the community or request a moderator for offering a 'private' upload link.

I appreciate the responses to my request.  I have been out of the office for some time and apologize for not keeping up on this.  I will begin digging into this in earnest now that I am back.  I will try thomaso's suggestions first and let you know how it goes. 

 

FYI that I did try exporting it once into smaller sections to find a culprit page (I used to have this problem often with the old software I used to use before I switched to Affinity a few years ago) but in the end every page exported fine.  

[NAK]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:19 PM, thomaso said:

Hi @NAK,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

The "Estimated File Size: Calculating…" not finishing indicates a certain spot in the .afpub is stopping the process. This can be a placed resource for instance (e.g. an image or a placed document). If you don't have a clue what element can cause issues you could try to export the .afpub partially (in certain page ranges) to narrow down a possibly culprit.

Another option could be to use a different export setting, e.g. "Rasterise: Everything" or "Nothing" and/or "Embed Fonts: Text as Curves" or "No fonts".

Alternatively you could upload the .afpub to the forum for inspection by the community or request a moderator for offering a 'private' upload link.

So, I ran through the whole process of saving groups of pages again to identify a bad page.  I had it narrowed down to a 10 page group that would give me the error message.  When I tried to save the pages individually, they all worked fine.  It had to do with the group.  I tried the Rasterize Everything and Rasterize Nothing options.  They did not make a difference  I could not locate the Embed Fonts option.   After that I noticed the option to turn off hyperlinks.  When I turned those off, the 10 pages saved fine.  I removed my hyperlinks and anchors for those pages and then redid them.  I turned the export hyperlink option back on and the error message had gone away.  So, apparently it had to do with a hyperlink or anchor in that page range.  Is there an easy way to see and edit all of the hyperlinks in the document?  Also, is there a way to export the document as a .pdf with searchable text?  Currently I am exporting as a PDF then running the Adobe text recognition software afterwards.  It takes a long time when you are over 1,000 pages.  

 

Thank you for your help on this!

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, NAK said:

I could not locate the Embed Fonts option.

Click More in the Export dialog. It's near the bottom of the list of the PDF options:

 

11 minutes ago, NAK said:

Also, is there a way to export the document as a .pdf with searchable text?  Currently I am exporting as a PDF then running the Adobe text recognition software afterwards.  It takes a long time when you are over 1,000 pages.  

As long as you don't choose Text as Curves (above), or do something to Rasterize the pages, the text will be editable and searchable automatically.

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, NAK said:

Also, is there a way to export the document as a .pdf with searchable text?

I would think that is a function for the PDF reader/viewer. If the text in the Publisher document is Text and exported as Text then the PDF reader should be able to search it.

 

[NAK]

On 9/30/2022 at 1:25 PM, walt.farrell said:

As long as you don't choose Text as Curves (above), or do something to Rasterize the pages, the text will be editable and searchable automatically.

Than You,I did some testing and my problem is not searching the manually typed text in the document, that works fine, it is searching the text in the pictures of my document.  My document is basically a 1000+ page parts breakdown for all of the machines we manufacture and remanufacture.  I import most of the Bills of Materials as .jpg files from the CAD drawings.  Those are not searchable unless I run the Adobe text recognition software.   I doubt there is a way around that as they are essentially seen as pictures by Affinity, not text.  

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, NAK said:

Those are not searchable unless I run the Adobe text recognition software.   I doubt there is a way around that as they are essentially seen as pictures by Affinity, not text.  

They are seen as images because they are images

For a solution in Affinity you'll need to import them in a different format. But for that workflow I'm not sure what would be appropriate. PDF, possibly, if the CAD program supports it?