Trouble Outputting PDF While PDFDSTL Works Fine

Jason St. John

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Mar 29, 2021, 6:10:07 PM3/29/21

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I'm attempting to run a job with a PDF output. When I run it as "PRINT PDF" it returns the following error -

"Merge Output is available only for VIPP, PDF, PS, PPML and VPS Print Formats. Please disable Merge Output or change the Print Format to VIPP, PDF, PS, PPML or VPS."

If I run it as "PRINT PDFO" it returns the following error -

"The operation was canceled in record 1 due to PDF standards compliance error. Please consult support for further investigation. This error might have occurred because of a missing font or a missing glyph character.

But if I use "PRINT LEGACY PDF" (Using PDFDSTL) it works and outputs the merged PDF as expected.

I need to use regular PDF as Legacy PDF does not take into account paper size, and causes our envelopes to render as Letter sized paper.

Any help getting PDF proper to work would be greatly appreciated.

couch

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Mar 29, 2021, 6:22:27 PM3/29/21

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How are you processing this document? uCreate Print or uProduce? - Asking because the way you say PDFO and PDFDSTL make me wonder if you are using uProduce APIs?

Anyhow, there are two parts to your question:

1) the merge output warning - which (I think) is a setting that you are missing on your job ticket if you are using uProduce APIs. For this, a code sample of how you create your ticket would be helpful.

2) the PDF Standards compliance error. For this, the error message is correct in 99% of cases. "missing font or a missing glyph character". In some cases, you can open the document (with the same data) in InDesign on the desktop and simply use File -> Export to PDF and find the same error message with perhaps some more info to help identify the character that is not in the font.

There are two solutions to the PDF compliance error: 1 - use a different font which has all the required glyphs, or 2 - remove the bad character from the document/data.

Anyhow, it can be easy or tricky to find the problem. If the missing character is in static text, it is easy since you should see it in InDesign. But if the character that is not available in the font is coming from the linked data, then it can be more difficult to identify. If this is the case, try to identify the record which has the bad character by printing different ranges of data. eg records 1-100, then 101-200 etc until you find the bad data.

couch

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Mar 29, 2021, 6:32:00 PM3/29/21

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This article may assist you with the missing glyphs: https://creativepro.com/tackling-missing-glyphs/

Jason St. John

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Apr 1, 2021, 11:26:28 AM4/1/21

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Thanks for the help, Couch! I was focused on the fact that we had a font not loading as a warning, but it was loading a substitute just fine best I could tell. You led me to check glyphs, and I was sending a word string to a barcode font that only takes 4 different characters...