Can't add PDF document

PDFCreator PDFCreator English
1

For some reason I can't add any PDF document to the PDFCreator; I click "Add", I can browse to the PDF, I can select it, but then I just return to the PDFCreator window that shows your list of files you've added, and there is nothing there; no error message, no printing, no nothing.  Here's some troubleshooting info, I hope someone can use it to help me out:

1)  I'm on a Windows XP machine w/ Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat installed

2)  On a DIFFERENT computer (same OS and applications), I CAN add PDF's, in fact the SAME PDF that won't work on the machine mentioned above.

3)  For some reason, the filetype filter on this PDFCreator is always defaulted to *.PS (PostScript) files, and I need to change it to PDF to see the PDF files to add.  The other machine, where it's working, is always on *.PDF by default.

4)  I have uninstalled and reinstalled, using the same setup.exe file as the machine where it IS working, and have restarted.

5) using my Excel macro that prints out sheets, then adds the external pdf, then combines and prints as one document, it IS adding the Excel sheets, it just doesn't do anything for the external PDF.  Again, this Excel macro works on a different machine, where it prints 5 excel sheets, then adds an external PDF, combines it all, and saves as 6-page PDF.

6)  One of the things that was different about this machine was that pdf's were associated with Internet Explorer (ie. doubleclicking a PDF would open it in an Internet Explorer window, not in Acrobat or Reader).  I used the Windows Explorer File Type utility to associate all pdf's with Adobe Reader instead.  So when I doubleclick a PDF file, it opens with Reader, but if I right-click it and choose "Open" (just open, not "open WITH"), it opens in Internet Explorer.  Which seems like weird behavior, because isn't right-click-->Open the same as a DoubleClick Open?

Hoping very much that someone can help, and thanks for your time

2

I have the same problem with the Reader 9 and PDFCreator. It appears on two machines: one is an old desktop running Windows XP, another is a new laptop with Windows 7 64 bit. The only common thing between the two machines is that both have AMD CPUs, however several generations apart. Not sure, if this may be the root cause.

I found a temporary workaround, rather clumsy but practical.

Instead of adding your PDFs in the PDFCreator, print them one-by-one from the Reader to the PDFCreator without closing PDFCreator window. Note that you may need to select PDFCreator printer in the Reader's Print dialog and hit "Wait-collect" in the PDFCreator's Save dialog for the first print. Every next print will add an entry in the PDFCreator window. After printing all intended documents, combine them as you would normally do in PDFCreator.

Hope this helps until somebody finds a real fix.

Good luck.

1 Like
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thanks for this - just had exactly that problem, some docs would show to merge and others not. Printing directly to PDF creator solved it, so thank you :slight_smile: