PDF printing problem

[dmh]

Hi All, I am having a problem with one of my pages when printing to PDF.

I created a door & window schedule in Excel, and placed it on the page by highlighting & copying the schedule in Excel, and using edit/paste-special/microsoft-office-2003-worksheet.

It goes into the paper space page fine, and when I go to print-preview it looks fine, but when I print to PDF the schedules show up as a black rectangle. (see attached screen shot) It seems like the text is behind the black, because I can move the cursor around inside the rectangle. (Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended)

Any ideas? Thanks!

[thebrian]

dmh

I'm not positive, but I believe it may be that OLE objects are not supported by the PDF libraies that are being used. In fact I am not sure that PDF actually supports OLE objects.
Try downloading PDF 995 it may convert the offending object.

[dmh]

Hi tB,

I tried using PDF 995, with the same results- black rectangles.

I found this autocad thread discussing the same problem. It seems like they have a solution, but I'm such a newbie to cad that I don't quite understand what they're saying for the solution.

Do you think you could take a look, and translate it to DoubleCad-ese for me?
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-2012/Printing-OLE-objects-Excel-Spreadsheets-in-AutoCAD-to-Adobe-pdf/td-p/2971486 
or use http://tinyurl.com/6mma46x

It seems like this will be a recurring problem for DoubleCad people going forward, as more and more small offices without plotters use pdf and a service bureau for their printing. Excel makes schedules much easier for newbies...

Thanks for your help!

[spider]

Hi dmh

Looking at the solution offered in the AutoCAD thread - all they are simply saying is.

1. Print the OK part in DoubleCAd to pdf. (use a free pdf printer - pdf 995, cute pdf etc...).
2. Print your excell parts to pdf.
3.Use 'Indesign' or another program (Illustrator or a free program like Inkscape? - it may import pdf's) to edit the 2 pdf's together to produce one final pdf.

It means using two programs here in their solution!

[dmh]

s65,

Thanks for this. I've never tried cutting and pasting together parts of a pdf before, but it should be simple. I've had acrobat/distiller for a while, but never used a lot of it's capabilities other than straight pdf, markup and ocr.

I'll give it a try, and post how it works out.

All this brings up more pdf/printing questions, but I'll post those as separate topics.

Best, dmh

[dmh]

Hi All,

Here’s a follow-up on how I solved the excel created schedules into pdf printing problem in Acrobat 9.

Adobe’s interface is dismally obtuse, but once you figure it out it’s quite easy & powerful.

This same process will probably work in other versions of Acrobat.

First, create the door/window schedule in excel, highlight the selection and print it to pdf.

Open the schedule in Acrobat. Be sure that the advanced editing toolbar is displayed: Tools>customize tool bars> (checkmark) advanced editing toolbars.

Select the crop tool, and crop the schedule close to the outer edge of the grid.

Select file>save as, and from the file type dropdown choose TIFF. You can choose PNG, JPG etc if you prefer, but I don’t know if the printed results will be as good.

Open the page in Acrobat where the schedule is to be inserted- in this case the floor plan page.

Choose the Touchup Object Tool. It’s the one on the far right of the advanced editing toolbar.

Right click in the document. From the popup shortcut menu, choose> place image.

Navigate through your file system, and select the schedule TIFF .

Acrobat will place the image in the upper left corner.

You can then continue to use the Touchup Object Tool to move and resize the schedule within the page. The arrow keys can be used for precise positioning.

That’s it! You can see the results in the attached screen shot.

Thanks to David Mankin for the tutorial on finding the deeply hidden place command in Acrobat!
http://iconlogic.blogs.com/weblog/2009/04/adobe-acrobat-9-adding-images.html