TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:MS Word chokes while making PDF? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"Techwr-L (E-mail)" <TECHWR-L -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 17 Mar 2000 08:43:33 -0500
David Brown <<...spent a good deal of today learning that--in Windows 98
with 64 MB of RAM--Acrobat Distiller (or someone) chokes before completing
the second phase of converting a 1775-page Word 2000 document--Word simply
stops responding and has to be "axed" by hand. As an experiment, I removed
most of the tables, which allowed the process to complete. Next, I'll
probably try comverting the table-heavy document on a machine with more
RAM.>>
Sometimes it's very useful to print a file to PDF in small chunks, rather
than the whole file at a time (particularly if RAM or other resources are
limiting). Once you've created all these chunks, you can reassemble them in
the correct order with Exchange. Even when you can't distill all the chunks
in this manner, you can at least identify which pages or sections are
causing problems and try to troubleshoot them.
Hofstadter's Law: The time and effort required to complete a project are
always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's
Law.