Negative DPI in linked inserted PDFs after updating.

[JosueVivas]

Right,

What you see in the video really breaks the document. 

As you can see on the video, I externally update 106 PDFs ( exported as PDFs at 300dpi).

The files location is the same, I only overwrite the PDFs (not editing the PDFs), however Publisher indicates that the external resource was "modified" and is ready to update.

When I update the linked PDFs everything goes wrong.

I tried to tick and untick the option to automatically update linked files in Preferences: having the same behaviour

Please tell me that I'm doing something wrong.

 

 

 

[Hangman]

Hi @JosueVivas,

This issue was logged as a known bug in V2.0.4 and as far as I'm aware was supposed to have been fixed in the V2.1.0.1732 Beta, however that is clearly not the case based on your video which shows the issue still exists in the latest V2.1.0.1742 Beta.

Usually where this issue has been seen it affects a single pdf (or other file format asset, such as .eps or .svg file) and normally replacing the PDF showing the negative dpi is enough to fix the problem so it's interesting that it affects all the PDFs in your document.

Out of interest, are the PDFs all exported from CAD software, and if so which particular software?

I notice that the PDFs you are using in your Publisher document are all located on OneDrive. My initial advice would to try the following:

1. Make a backup copy of your Publisher document and all the Assets used in your docmuent and store it in a different location.
    
2. Move your Publisher Document together with all the PDF files and any other Assets used in your document to your internal Hard Drive and then attempt to update the PDFs in Resource Manager from their new location to see if that fixes the issue.
    
3. If you see the same result, open say the first five PDF files used in your document from their new location, i.e., BP-101-001-A.pdf to BP-101-001-E.pdf and re-save the PDFs, overwriting the originals on your internal hard drive (not the backups).
    
4. In Resource Manager, select the first five, resaved PDFs only and Update them to see if those now Update correctly showing the correct positive Placed DPI.
    
5. If they do then as far as I know the only solution would be to reopen every PDF file used in your document and resave it and then update them all accordingly.

I know the Development Team were of the impression they'd identified the cause of the issue you are experiencing and as mentioned above, my understanding (which may be incorrect) was that a fix should have been introduced in the .1732 Beta but I don't know what the actual cause of this issue is so can't suggest anything over and above trying the above.

Note: I've managed to fix Publisher files exhibiting the same behaviour by opening and resaving the PDF files showing a negative DPI but the above steps are not a guarantee that this will fix the issue but certainly both moving from OneDrive to your Internal Drive and opening and resaving a small handful of the PDFs will at least demonstrate whether the files being stored externally has introduced any partial corruption to either the PDf or Publisher file itself.

If you are able to try the above steps and report back that would be extremely helpful. If you still have the same problem after trying these steps then someone from the moderation team will hopefully be able to add to the above comments and suggest a way to resolve the issue for you though that may not now be until Tuesday owing to the Easter break.

[JosueVivas]

Surte thing Hangman.

What I'm writing applies to BETA 2.1.0.1742 and 2.0.4.

 

57 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Out of interest, are the PDFs all exported from CAD software, and if so which particular software?

 

Indeed, from CAD software: Solid Edge V2023 Maintenance Pack 4. PDFs are saved up to 600dpi as a vector graphics: hence why each PDF I xport from CAD is around 50KB or less. I tried exporting the PDFs from CAD at 300dpi having the same results.

 

59 minutes ago, Hangman said:

I notice that the PDFs you are using in your Publisher document are all located on OneDrive. My initial advice would to try the following:

I used to have the folder, and its subfolders with the assets, in Google drive and moved to Onedrive to troubleshoot. It improved, making Publiser more stable but the Linked PDF problem is still the same.

 

49 minutes ago, Hangman said:

1. Make a backup copy of your Publisher document and all the Assets used in your docmuent and store it in a different location.

Done a week ago. The same problem.

 

50 minutes ago, Hangman said:

2. Move your Publisher Document together with all the PDF files and any other Assets used in your document to your internal Hard Drive and then attempt to update the PDFs in Resource Manager from their new location to see if that fixes the issue.

Done two weeks ago. moved all folders toguether, and then the publihser file kept the link to teh PDFs to the previous folder. I had to manually updte all the links to the PDFs in the new folder. The problem still persist.

 

52 minutes ago, Hangman said:

3. If you see the same result, open say the first five PDF files used in your document from their new location, i.e., BP-101-001-A.pdf to BP-101-001-E.pdf and re-save the PDFs, overwriting the originals on your internal hard drive (not the backups).

I tried that today. Same problem. 🤔

 

52 minutes ago, Hangman said:

4. In Resource Manager, select the first five, resaved PDFs only and Update them to see if those now Update correctly showing the correct positive Placed DPI.

Done last week (in the version 2.0.4) and tried today in teh BETA version. It does update a handfull of PDFs, but when you try to updated the next "five" it doesn't work anymore.

 

54 minutes ago, Hangman said:

5. If they do then as far as I know the only solution would be to reopen every PDF file used in your document and resave it and then update them all accordingly.

That works exporadically, only wehn I save one by one. Unfortunatelly I'm exporting 120 PDFs in bulk. My theroy is that Publisher can't handle the change in memory location of another file with the same name: I don't know, it is a shot in the dark.

 

 

At this point, I think I need a drink. LOL

 

 Josue

[Hangman]

12 minutes ago, JosueVivas said:

At this point, I think I need a drink. LOL

At this point I think a drink is well deserved...

Many thanks for clarifying in such detail everything you've tried to date, that is extremely helpful...

Would you be happy to upload maybe the first five PDF files along with your Publisher document so I can take a look at them for you to see if I can figure out if something else is going on...

It has been possible to rectify this issue for other users so I'm hoping I may be able to spot something else here and provide some alternative suggestions for you...

[JosueVivas]

I found a walk around thanks to @walt.farrell's guidance!

See link bellow @Hangman

 

 

Now, I found a way not to have to relink the PDFs after updating them in bulk. Still a pain to need to modify the DPI on all  linked PDFs.

 

Josue.

 

 

[Hangman]

2 hours ago, JosueVivas said:

Now, I found a way not to have to relink the PDFs after updating them in bulk. Still a pain to need to modify the DPI on all  linked PDFs.

That’s still a complete pain and is clearly a bug but glad your have a work around for now…

[Sean P]

Hi JosueVivas,

Thanks for letting us know. I've tried this myself using a couple of PDFs, modifying them and then resizing them but unfortunately I've been unable to reproduce this.

Would it be possible for you to send us a copy of your Publisher Document, a set of the PDFs prior to you re-exporting them, and then a set of the PDFs after you've re-exported them.

Unfortunately I don't have any access to CAD software, so the best thing I can attempt to do is try replicating this by manually replacing them in Windows.

I've created a Dropbox link here for you to upload them to us internally:
https://www.dropbox.com/request/SVPbT3i95kTW5E5H0jvy

[JosueVivas]

Hello @Sean P

I have the files ready but unfortunatelly, the dropbx link is not active: it says: " This file request has been closed, deleted, or never existed.".

Could you create anotehr link, please?

I'll send you a packaged Apub file + teh linked PDFs and a set of teh 100+ PDFs modified so you can replicate this bug.

 

Josue

[Sean P]

10 hours ago, JosueVivas said:

Hello @Sean P

I have the files ready but unfortunatelly, the dropbx link is not active: it says: " This file request has been closed, deleted, or never existed.".

Could you create anotehr link, please?

I'll send you a packaged Apub file + teh linked PDFs and a set of teh 100+ PDFs modified so you can replicate this bug.

 

Josue

Hi Josue,

My apologies about that - it looks like that request got closed accidentally. I've now re-opened it and you should be able to use the same link as above.

[JosueVivas]

Not a problem. 

I just uploaded the files. 

I included a video showing how to replicate the bug with the specific files I'm sent.

Note: You will see that the lastest revison of the file (revision Z version 2) can not replicate the error: I found out that when you update each linked PDF at a single time, resoruce manager can catch-up with the file updates with no errors: my theory on why the file Rev Z V2 can't replicate the error is because the links were updated one by one and then the file was saved.

However, Rev W V5, breaks straight away.

Also, these two files occupy very different amount of memory on disc, when they have virtually the same amount of content inside. That is odd.

I noticed that when I "save As" between revisons, the new copy occupies less memory.

I hope it helps.

Kind,

Josue

[Sean P]

Thanks for the files Josue. I'll have a give it a go and see what I can find!