InDesign Shorts: Tip #6 – Troubleshooting ‘Failed to Export’

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If you’ve ever been down to the wire on a proposal submission, clicked ‘Export to PDF’ and watched as the progress bar pushed forward while the seconds on the clock ticked down, nerves frayed, fingers crossed, only to receive the dreaded ‘failed to export’ message in searing red letters… today’s tip is for you.

There are several factors that could be causing an issue with exporting to PDF. In my experience, it’s usually links – specifically PDF links – that cause the problem, so today’s tip is going to assume that’s your problem too. Even if you’ve checked all of your links and everything is good to go, here are three possible solutions for exporting InDesign to PDF.

Option 1: Find the Problem

If you have some time, try exporting your PDF in chunks. If you have a 50-page document, export pages 1-25 and then 26-50. If one of those fails to export, cut those pages in half. For example, say pages 1-25 exported just fine, but pages 26-50 failed. Try exporting 26-38 and if those export fine, try 39-50. Keep cutting down the number of pages you export until you narrow down the problem to one or two pages. If those pages have any links on them, try re-linking the files. Use CTRL+D (or CMD+D for Mac users) to place your file, rather than dragging and dropping the file into InDesign. Also, check those pages for missing fonts, and update those to installed fonts.

Option 2: Save your PDFs as JPEGS

Sometimes PDFs use fonts that aren’t installed on your computer, and that can cause exporting issues. By saving your PDFs as .jpg files, you’re flattening the fonts and removing that potential issue in InDesign. Simply ‘Save As’ your PDF into an image file, and drop that image file into your document. Unfortunately, this can be time-consuming so it’s a best practice to do this when you first start writing your proposal, rather than at the end. If you are at the end, look for PDFs that have script fonts (like digital signatures) and try replacing those first.

Option 3: Print to PDF

Printing to PDF is a quick workaround for failure to export to PDF, though it does have some quirks. Most of the time, your printed PDF will look fine, but unlike exported PDFs, printed PDFs only run one page size. That means if you have covers that are 9×11″, interior pages that are 8.5×11″, or any 11×17″ pages in your proposal, they’re all going to get cropped to the size you specify on export. You can solve this by exporting the different sized pages individually, then assembling them using Acrobat. Additionally, if you have any broken or compromised links, printed PDFs sometimes export those as black squares. Just be sure to double-check your final PDF file before you submit it!

Have you ever received the dreaded ‘Failed to Export’ error message? What was the issue, and how did you fix it?