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mkatzman

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adobe distiller crash while printing ms access report (landscape, full page graphics)

Distiller crashes on large, graphic intensive report generated by MS ACCESS.  full page graphic on landscape report, margins set to .5 all around.  Data is overlayed on graphic.  Graphic is grey-scaled .gif at about 500 kb, (linked and/or embedded--I've tried both).  Distiller is 8.1.2 with latest patches and works for everything else.

Machine is 2.8 Mhz with 3 Gb ram.  I've printed graphical data reports before to pdf, but this is largest.

I have tried various pdf settings without resolution, but can't be sure I'm doing this efficiently.

Report could easily surpass 1,000 pages.  I've tried smaller runs, but it still crashes.

Any hints for settings changes or resolution:
Avatar of slamhound
slamhound

MS Access is not very good at doing anything big so that's probably where your problem lies.

Will Distiller work fine on a sinle print page?
Can you try a 3rd party PDF maker to see if it makes a difference?
Can you give me any more details about the crashes?
Avatar of mkatzman

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Removed the graphic background (landscape 11 x 8.5) and still didn't work.  Wondering if whole report format is corrupted.

Have tried 3rd party pdf...  (universal...) but it didn't work much better... crashed on the 100th page, but adobe crashed on 2nd page.
About crashes:  When I print to Adobe pdf, I get the usual dialogue boxes... then it begins to compile the first page, hesitates (normal), starts the second page, and then I get the box "application failed...Send details to Microsoft..."

I nave tried different compresson schemes on the graphic.  As for doing big, I routinely compile 500 to 2000 page pdfs generated from Access, only not with this large a graphic.  Perhaps, tiling the graphic?
If you think there is corruption going on, you can create a fresh, new database and import the vital tables into it. Then import the report and see how it runs.

If this fails, create a brand new report and copy & paste items from your original report till you have the very bare bones (no graphic background, minimum calculations etc). If this works, keep adding components till you get your original report or it stops working again. This way you will be able to see what item is causing the crash.

The other think you can try is generating and outputing the report page by page. This way, you only ever have a single page youre dealing with at any one time so system resourses should not be a problem.
Avatar of Scott McDaniel (EE MVE )
slamhound's right - the first order of business would be an import to a new db, if you're getting that error message.

I'd think tiliing the graphic would be more resource intensive.

One other thing to try would be to have your graphic at the same actual size as is being used in the report so Access doesn't have to stretch/resize/zoom it.
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mkatzman

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