PDF Woes

**corsair** · 28 November 2005, 09:17 AM

Morning all,
I have a problem with exporing Pdfs at the moment - I can't - Xara locks up and gives me the message:
"A write error occurred (file does not exist) with the file: unknown" The Help doesn't really help as it refers to the possibility of disc errors - I saved the file to various drives and even external storage. No luck, and yes, I have downloaded the latest version.

Can anyone help, please. It's really important because the a/w is an invoice and I need to get paid! (needless to say, the artwork for which I need paying was done in Xara Xtreme).
Cheers
Fraser

**outofspacero** · 28 November 2005, 09:49 AM

i don't have a solution to your problem but i have a question?
when you installed the latest build of xtreme, have you uninstalled
the previous version before installing the new build?
Also it helps if you delete all of the registry that xtreme leaves even
after you uninstalled it with Regedit or another program.
Also there is a topic not long ago where Gary and the other people
gave some suggestions about ways of trying to make the pdf export
work.
So browse through the xtreme topics and you should find other
questions and answers related to pdf export

**RTW1** · 28 November 2005, 10:00 AM

This free program works very well with Xara for making pdf files, why not use it till Xara gets the pdf problems sorted.
http://www.pdf995.com/

**corsair** · 28 November 2005, 10:14 AM

Thanks guys! The most irritating thing about the problem is having to crash out of Xara using control-at-delete. I did a fresh install, by the way, Made no odds. I shall have a look at the threads and read what's there. Meanwhile pdf995 seems to be a workable standby.
Thanks again,
Fraser

**GerryI** · 28 November 2005, 10:20 AM

We have recently seen a problem where a shadow object can get left in the document without any objects to shadow and this causes a problem with the PDF export (giving exactly this error message).

You could try drag-selecting your whole document and copying it into a new document. (Tip. Create a new document of the same page size and then use paste in place to keep the positioning). Then save it as a different filename and try exporting that. Hopefully, this should avoid copying the bad object and the problem should go away.

Hope this helps,
Gerry Iles

**corsair** · 28 November 2005, 10:31 AM

I have a feeling this might be the culprit. It's a vector rendering of a drawing of my old dog which I use as my logo. I don't believe there's any shadows in it, but there are gradients and transparencies, i.e. a typical bit of Xara artwork... The rest of the piece is just text and exports without the logo with no problem, but no logo...
Regards
Fraser

**Daniel** · 28 November 2005, 12:13 PM

While on the subject of PDFs, is there a reason why bitmap-filled objects don't make it into PDF exports?

**Don Lamb** · 28 November 2005, 08:13 PM

Daniel,

I downloaded and exported your xar file to pdf and it appeared the same as the xar file. I also repeated your directions in my own file and again the bitmap fill came through fine in the pdf. I also followed the procedure with a photo, cutting out a portion with an intersect and adding a drop shadow and the pdf export looked fine. Looks like the pdf export is not a woe in this case on my machine.

Don

**Daniel** · 28 November 2005, 08:50 PM

I guess that explains why no-one else has asked why such a fundamental part of the PDF export doesn't work: I didn't consider that it might be a bad installation here!

I'll try reinstalling Acrobat in that case, clean reinstalls of Xtreme make no difference but it's no priority - I don't trust Xtreme for day to day work because it's not as stable as X¹.