Very slow when printing either to Adobe PDF or Print To File

[Combs, Richard]

kblake2 at mmm.com wrote:
 
> I haven't been very good about including all the relevant details in my
> responses. My coworker and I have been troubleshooting this together.
> When IT tried to help her, they uninstalled all of her printers,
> including Adobe PDF, then reinstalled all her printers, except for
> Adobe PDF. Now, she had never used Adobe PDF in the past, but the fact
> that it was now gone really perturbed her. She nagged IT and they
> didn't know how to get Adobe PDF back for her, so they told her to use
> PDFCreator instead, and it resulted in a drastic improvement in the
> speed of her PDF-making. That is why I also decided to install
> PDFCreator.

I'm copying the list in my reply because others may have more/better insights -- wisdom of the crowd, you know. 

I don't know anything about PDFCreator, but I'd be surprised if your coworker's PDFs weren't missing the features that the integration of Distiller with FM provides -- like working hyperlinks for cross-references, the TOC, and index, and bookmarks created from the paragraphs selected in FM's PDF Setup. 

Adobe PDF is a non-hardware-specific printer driver designed for creating PDFs. Using a hardware-specific printer driver (e.g., HP or Ricoh -- whatever your company uses as a physical printer) is a bad idea, as Adobe's Dov Isaacs and others have stated many times.
 
> Regarding the order of FM and Acrobat installs, I think you may be on
> to something. It hadn't dawned on me that when I installed FM 9 last
> year, I was installing it *after* Acrobat 8 which was installed 2 years
> ago. I'm wondering if that is what is causing my problems. I didn't
> start using FM 9 in any significant way until just a few weeks
> ago....very close to the time when our printers were switched out.
> Prior to that, I was using FM 7 with the previous printers, and now I
> find I have problems with both FM 7 and FM 9 as I use these new
> printers to make PDFs. Once again, I can make a PDF as always, it's
> just really, really slow now. I'm not convinced the new printer drivers
> innocent in all of this, but maybe it is a perfect storm of printer
> drivers and an Acrobat/FM problem. I'll have to see what I can do about
> reinstalling Acrobat. I'm in the middle of a release right now so I
> don't want to mess with stuff too much.
> 
> Regarding Adobe PDF, I do see it in my Printers and Faxes, and the port
> is indeed set to My Documents\*.pdf.
> 
> I really, really appreciate your insights. I'm a bit embarrassed to
> have used FM all these years yet still be ignorant of the inner
> workings. It has all worked flawlessly up to this point so I never had
> a reason to check under the hood.

If I were you, as soon as time permits, I'd reinstall Acrobat. And use Adobe PDF as the printer. That alone may solve the problem. 

I don't know if there are any issues or tips for using FM 9 with Acro 8 -- maybe someone else does. But you shouldn't be having problems with using FM 7 and Acro 8 -- as long as both are properly installed and you set your printer in FM to Adobe PDF. 

Good luck!

Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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