I have to admit that I am not a big fan of Friday 13th (the date, I mean, because I have never actually seen the movies - not really my sort of thing). It is already looking like it is confirming my view of it, because I have just had a telephone call from the warden's office at the sheltered housing complex where our old friend Noela McKenzie lives. She is 87 and the oldest member of the CFZ. Last night she had a fall and did something to her hip. Graham and I are going into Bideford now to try and sort it out, so basically we shall both be out of action all day.
However, there is something that someone out in bloggoland may be able to do for us. The other night there were Windows Automatic Updates, and for some reason we can no longer make pdfs from our (legit) copy of Microsoft Publisher 2003. We get the following error message:
error: invalidfileaccess; offendingcommand: image
I have looked this up online but the technical jargon I have found is beyond me to interpret. Can anyone help?
By the way, I am feeling frazzled as hell, so messages telling me that I should buy an Apple Mac, use linux instead, or that I should really use a completely different DTP package will probably result in a torrent of abuse and a brandy bottle flung at the head of the perpetrator. For better or for worse we have been producing our books with this package for years now, and everyone involved (and there are quite a few of us now) knows how to use it. But if you can help, please gimme a shout.
On a related subject. If someone can make me a copy of Adobe Acrobat 6 or higher I would be very grateful. I have mislaid my copy somewhere in the office and I need it urgently.
Now, I am off to see Noela. Keep her in your prayers.
As far as I can tell, the problem is unlikely to be anything to do with the updates, or with the Publisher program at all.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is going on is this:
The Publisher program is producing printing output in the form of a postscript file, with images embedded in this file.
This postscript file is being sent to something which is supposed to be able to interpret this postscript file, whether this be the local printer or a driver sub-system on Windows. This thing which is supposed to be able to read the postscript is returning an error.
The errors you are getting indicate that an image in the document cannot be read because something in this image could not be understood by the postscript interpreter.
To fix this, see if you can elicit the error using just print preview. If you can, then go through removing one image in turn from the document until the failure ceases happening; alternatively if you suspect that one of the image files may be dubious, try that one first.
You might also want to make certain that the source files have sensible names; no overly-long names or names with characters like "%" or "$" in them, for instance. Finally, make certain that the source files can all be read by Publisher (put them all on the same disk, too; I harbour a few slight doubts regarding how functional some of your external disks may be).
If this doesn't sort it, give me a shout and I'll do whatever else I can. I'm no Windows techie, mind, but I can google error codes with the best of 'em.
There are lots of free download PDF generators available - try CutePDF.....
ReplyDeleteDave from Australia.
Quick fix: Download Open Office (free) and use the PDF creator in the word processing arm, Open Office Writer.
ReplyDelete2: Get a copy of Serif Page Plus and create the PDF using that. I've often found it works when Microsoft's offering fails.
Dave in Australia is right about Cute PDF. There's a free copy of it on the current DVD version of Computer Shopper which you can pick up in WHS, ASDA, or whatever.
None of these might work, but they might be worth a try.
All the best,
Mike