MacOS Finder crashes after saving Affinity templates or exporting pdf

[RBDArch]

Hello,

I am new to this forum, so please excuse any mistakes...

We are using Publisher for layouting business letters. When I export a pdf file and then want to click on the pdf-file in the Mac OS Finder, the Finder freezes. Restarting the Finder (Apple + Cmd + Esc) does not work. After waiting about 15 Minutes, it works again. Same happens when saving as a template file.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Working with Affinity Publisher 2.3.1 

on Apple MacBook Pro 14" 2021 Apple M1 Pro 32GB

MacOS Ventura 13.6.3

[Hangman]

Hi @RBDArch and welcome to the forums,

This initially sounds more like a macOS issue than an Affinity one, has this only started happening since updating to Ventura 13.6.3?

AKAIK, this is the first time this issue has been reported (though I could be wrong) and I think it's likely there would have been many reports if this were specific to the Affinity apps themselves since PDF export is very common.

There is a really old report in the Apple forums that sounds very similar, i.e., the Mac Finder freezing when attempting to open PDF files but it relates to macOS 10.5.5. (Yosemite). As far as I can tell the 'solution' at that time was an OS update which I appreciate may not be an option here...

Which PDF Viewer are you using to view your exported PDF files and what happens if you check the box 'Preview export when complete' in the PDF export settings when exporting your file, does it also result in the Finder freezing or does it launch your PDF Viewer and display your exported PDF file?

Are you able to upload a sample Publisher file so we can take a look and test it?

[stokerg]

Hi @RBDArch and Welcome to the Forums  

I'm in agreement with @Hangmanhere and this does sound more like a macOS issue than anything and isn't something I've personally seen reported here either. 

However, if you can provide the Publisher file you are using, then we can look into this further  

[RBDArch]

Hi all,

thanks for your replies!

I normally generated pdf files with printing and then choosing pdf. I now tried exporting as pdf and also exporting as pdf with preview after exporting. This directly shows me the pdf file in Acrobat reader. This works fine.

It's only in Finder that I cannot access the file and it freezes. Publisher freezes too after generating the pdf file. It happens with all files, also when I open a new document and only put some text there. See file attached.

I have also installed the PDF Expert program on the computer.

I also think that it's a Finder issue. The MacBook is new and we installed Publisher directly under OS Ventura. The problem has been there ever since.  

testfile.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @RBDArch,

Many thanks for the update and test file...

My initial thought is that this is likely going to be related to your print driver if it's freezing when creating PDF files via the print driver but it works as expected when using the Affinity app export option...

Printing is effectively handled directly via the OS and print driver so my first thought would be to check you have the latest print driver installed and even if you do uninstall and then reinstall the print driver for your printer, reboot and then retest, assuming you've not already tried this of course...

Which printer do you use when using the print option to Save as PDF?

For me your test file prints to PDF without issue using the printers I have installed, this is something I use often for one particular project and I've never experienced any issues when creating PDF files this way from Affinity apps...

Let us know if updating and/or reinstalling the print driver makes any difference... likewise, if you have access to a different printer, what happens if you select that one instead, do you see the same Finder freeze when printing to PDF?

[RBDArch]

Hi Hangman,

thanks again! 

I made a firmware update of the printer (Brother MFC-J6930DW) and now everything is going fine!!

Thanks for your help!

Best,

 

[Hangman]

Hi @RBDArch,

That's really good to hear, I'm glad that has resolved the issue for you and you can now continue working without the Finder crashing...