Troubleshooting Printing Problems

You can click the Printing Tips button in the Print dialog box in Acrobat 6 and Adobe Reader 6 to go online to the Adobe Web site to get a slew of suggestions on how to troubleshoot the most common printing problems with Acrobat. This area of the Adobe support knowledge base is particularly helpful if you’re having trouble printing a PDF file on a PostScript printer. The Web page includes instructions on how to enable the PostScript error handler for your printer, depending upon which operating system you’re using (Windows or Macintosh) so you can track the specific errors that printing the PDF file is causing. It also contains a link to another page on the Adobe Web site that tells you what these PostScript errors really mean and gives you some suggestions on how to get around them.

Using the prepress printing settings

In addition to the standard printing options described in previous sections, the Print dialog box also contains an Advanced button that opens the Advanced Print Setup dialog box. These features are used only when preparing a PDF document for professional printing with high-end imagesetters. Don’t mess with these prepress settings without the advice and consent of your favorite service bureau people. When you click the name of any check box option in the Advanced Print Setup dialog box, Acrobat displays a brief description of that option in a text box at the bottom of the dialog box. Just be mindful that when clicking the name of an option to get a brief explanation of its function, you also end up either selecting or deselecting that check box. If you’re just exploring the options to discover more about their use, be sure that you don’t inadvertently select an option you don’t really want to use.

How to print oversized PDF documents?

Some of the PDF documents that you want to print are too large to fit even the largest paper sizes that your printer can handle. Acrobat handles this in the Print dialog box by automatically selecting the Shrink Large Pages on the Page Scaling drop-down list. This option automatically scales down the text and graphics on each page to fit the paper size selected for your printer.
When the Shrink Large Pages option is selected, the program automatically selects the Auto-Rotate and Center Pages check box option. When this option is selected, Acrobat routinely rotates PDF documents that are wider than the selected paper size, while at the same time centering the text and graphics that do fit. When this check box is selected in conjunction with the Shrink Oversized Pages to Paper Size option, Acrobat shrinks the text and graphics on each page so that they all fit and are centered on the page. If you have a PostScript printer installed on your system, you can print oversized pages in your PDF documents using a method called tiling. When you print oversized pages by tiling, Acrobat or Adobe Reader divides each oversized page into sections, each of which is printed on a single page of paper. You can then fit the printed pages together to see how the oversized page will appear when printed with a printer that can handle the oversized paper.
Acrobat gives you two print tiling options on the Page Scaling drop-down list:
Tile Large Pages (only pages larger than the selected paper size are tiled) and Tile All Pages. Selecting either of these options displays the following new settings in the Print dialog box:

• Tile Scale: Enter a value in this text box to scale the printed PDF file onto tiles. A higher percentage creates more tiles, a lower percentage creates fewer tiles.
• Overlap: Enter a value in this text box to indicate the amount you want the printing on adjacent tiles to overlap each other so you can more easily align them with each other. Enter a decimal value for this overlap distance of anywhere between 0.125 and 0.25 inches. You need this overlap distance, because laser printers have to maintain a minimum of blank space on the page where they grab and pull the paper. The exact value you enter depends on your particular printer and the page size your tiles use.
• Cut Marks: Choose an option from this drop-down list to indicate which guide marks you want printed on the page. Select None to have no guides printed for cropping the tiled printout, or select either Western (the crosshatched registration marks universally used in North American and European printers) or Eastern style cut marks.
• Labels: Select this check box to print descriptive labels on each tile.

How to print selected pages?

Sometimes, you don’t need to print all the pages in a PDF document or even a continuous range of pages. If you’re using Acrobat 6 or Adobe Reader 6, you can print individual, nonconsecutive pages in the document. To do this, you need to select the individual pages before you open the Print dialog box by following these steps:

1. Click the Pages tab in the Navigation pane to bring its palette to the front. If the Navigation pane is closed, press F6 to open and select the Pages palette.
2. To see all the thumbnails for the pages you want to select for printing, you may need to switch to small thumbnails and widen the Navigation pane:
• To switch to small thumbnails, click the Options button at the top of the palette and then click Reduce Page Thumbnails near the bottom of its pop-up menu.
• To widen the Navigation pane until all the thumbnails are displayed (or all the ones with pages you want to print), position the mouse pointer on the border between the Navigation and Document panes and then, when the mouse pointer becomes a double-headed arrow, drag the border to the right until the Navigation pane is wide enough to display all the thumbnails.
3. Ctrl+click (Ô+click on the Macintosh) the thumbnails for all the individual pages you want to print to select them in the Thumbnail palette.
4. Choose File➪Print or press Ctrl+P (Ô+P on the Mac). The Print dialog box opens with the Selected Pages radio button selected.
5. Click OK to begin printing only the selected pages in the PDF document.

To print just a graphic on the page, click the Snapshot tool (G) on the Basic Tools toolbar and use it to draw a bounding box around the image. After selecting the image in this manner, right-click (Control+click on the Mac) to display the image’s context menu and click the Print option to open the Print dialog box.

How to Play with the PostScript options?

If you have a PostScript printer, you can modify the PostScript options in the Advanced Print Setup dialog box in Acrobat or Adobe Reader. To open this dialog box, click the Advanced button in the Print dialog box. Use the Font and Resource Policy drop-down list to specify when fonts and resources are downloaded to your printer. Use the Print Method drop-down list to select the level of PostScript (2 or 3) best suited for your printer (some older laser printers don’t understand levels of PostScript). When the Download Asian Fonts check box is selected, Acrobat downloads Asian Fonts used but not embedded in the PDF document to the laser printer if they are not already installed on it. Select the Save Printer Memory check box to have Acrobat download all the fonts for a given page before that page is printed to save on printer memory. Note that all options in the Advanced Print Setup dialog box display descriptive information in a scroll box below when you select an option.

How to print document layers?

Acrobat 6 now supports document layers created in the AutoCAD and Microsoft Visio design programs. Those who create layered drawings in those programs can specify what layer content, such as watermarks or confidential information, must (or must not) be printed. They can then convert their documents to PDF, layers and all, to be viewed in Acrobat 6. If the resulting PDF file contains content that is not visible on the screen but should be printed (or vice versa), Acrobat 6 displays a warning message in the Print dialog box, as well as a preview of how the page will be printed. You can use commands on the Options menu at the top of the Layers navigation tab to determine what specific layer content you want to print. To open the Layers tab, choose View➪Navigation Tabs➪Layers or just click the Layers tab on the left side of the Navigation pane. To view a document exactly as it will print, choose Apply Print Overrides on the Options menu. This option prints all layer content in the document, even if it is not visible in the Acrobat document pane.
You can also change print overrides for specific layers. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click the Layers tab in the Navigation pane to open the Layers palette and view the list of layers in the current PDF file.
2. Click a layer name in the Layers palette list to select a layer, and then choose Layer Properties on the Options menu at the top of the Navigation pane. Alternatively, you can right-click the layer and choose Properties on the context menu to open the Layer Properties dialog box.
3. Select the option you want from the Print drop-down list as follows:
• Select the Always Prints option to force the selected layer to print.
• Select the Never Prints option to force the selected layer to not print.
• Select the Prints When Visible option to force the layer to print only when it is visible in the document.
4. Click OK to close the Layer Properties dialog box.

Printing PDF Files

Printing PDF documents in Acrobat 6 or Adobe Reader 6 is very similar to printing documents in any other Windows or Macintosh application program that you use.
Before you print a file, you can change the general print settings, such as the paper size or the printing orientation from the default of portrait mode to landscape mode. To change these settings, choose File➪Page Setup in Acrobat or Adobe Reader or press Ctrl+Shift+P (Ô+Shift+P on the Mac) to open the Page Setup dialog box, modify the printing options as desired, and then click OK. The actual options and controls available in the Page Setup dialog box vary according to the actual printer selected as your default. If you just need a printout of the document’s pages using the standard Print options, follow these simple steps:

1. Choose File➪Print (in Acrobat or Adobe Reader) or press Ctrl+P (Ô+P on the Mac). The Print dialog box opens.
2. If you have more than one printer installed on your system, you can select a different printer to print the PDF document by selecting the name of the printer in the Name drop-down list (Windows) or by selecting a different printer on the Printer drop-down list (Mac). Specify which pages you want to print by doing one of the following:

• To print all the pages in the current PDF document, leave the All radio button selected.
• To print just the area of a document that is currently visible in the Acrobat document window, select the Current View radio button.
• To print only the page currently displayed in Acrobat or Adobe Reader, select the Current Page radio button.
• To print a continuous range of pages in the document, select the Pages radio button and enter the first page to print in the From text box and the last page to print in the To text box. See Chapter 9 for details on adding notes and marking up text, and to find out how to summarize the comments in a document and save them in a separate file that you can print.

3. Click the OK button to begin printing the pages of your PDF file.

In the upper-right corner of the Windows version of the Print dialog box, you find two check box options — Print to File and Print Color as Black:

• Select the Print to File option only when you want to create a file for a type of printer that you don’t actually have available on your computer system. You can then send or take the print file to a computer that has the targeted printer connected to it but doesn’t have the Acrobat or Adobe Reader program installed. When you drag the print file on the printer icon, it prints the PDF document with all the printing options you specified in Acrobat.
• Select the Print Color as Black option to change all non-white colors to black. This feature is useful when printing technical drawings that have lightly colored lines.
  

In the lower-left area of the Print dialog box you find the following Page Handling options:

• Copies: Type in the text box or click the spinner buttons to specify the number of copies of each page you want printed.
• Page Scaling: Reduces, enlarges, or divides pages when printing. The options on the drop-down list let you select various ways of scaling the printout of the current PDF document to the selected paper size in your printer. Choose None to have no scaling applied to a PDF printout or Fit to Paper to have Acrobat reduce or enlarge a PDF file to fit the paper size selected in the Page Setup dialog box. See the “Printing oversized documents” section, later in this chapter, for more on Acrobat’s Page Scaling print features.
• Auto-Rotate and Center: Select this check box if you want the page orientation of the current PDF file to automatically match those specified in your printer properties.
• Choose Paper Source by PDF Page Size: Select this Windows-only check box to have the PDF page size determine which of your printer’s paper trays to use rather than the Page Setup option. Use this feature in cases where a PDF file containing multiple page sizes is printed on a printer with different-sized output trays.
• Print What: Use the options on the drop-down list to specify which visible contents in a PDF to print. The Document option prints all visible contents and form fields, the Document and Comments option adds comments to the printout, and the Form Fields Only option prints out interactive form fields but no document contents.
• Printing Tips: Click this button to go online to Adobe’s Web site for information on troubleshooting PDF printing problems.

Refreshing updated content

Some Web sites, especially those that cover current affairs or the news, frequently update the content of some or all of their pages. If your purpose in capturing Web pages is to keep up-to-date on the information offered by a site, you will need to refresh the pages on a regular basis to ensure that your file has the most recent content.
To refresh the content of the captured pages in your PDF file, choose Advanced➪Web Capture➪Refresh Pages. Doing this opens the Refresh Pages dialog box. Click the Refresh button to have Acrobat check all the pages in the Refresh Commands list for updates. By default, the program compares the text of the captured pages with their counterparts online. If Acrobat detects any discrepancies between the two, it automatically updates the downloaded page in the PDF file by replacing it with a copy of the latest page on the Web site. If you want Acrobat to compare all elements on the Web pages when looking for the ones that need refreshing instead of just comparing the text, select the Compare All Page Components to Detect Changed Pages radio button in the Refresh Pages dialog box before you click the Refresh button.
If you want to exclude certain pages from the Refresh Command list, click the Edit Refresh Commands List button to open the Refresh Commands List dialog box. This dialog box lists all the pages marked for refreshing. To skip particular pages in the refresh operation, click the Clear All button and then select the URLs for all the pages you do want refreshed to highlight them before you click OK.
Keep in mind that you can’t add new URLs to the list displayed in the Refresh Commands List dialog box: You can only tell Acrobat which ones to ignore when refreshing the pages. The only way to add a URL to the Refresh Commands list is to capture its Web page when the Save Refresh Commands check box option has been checked in the Web Page Conversion Settings dialog box.

Adding linked pages to a PDF file

Another way to add Web pages to a PDF file that contains captured Web content is through the Web links displayed in the Select Page Links to Download dialog box. For this method, you view all the Web links on a particular Web page in the PDF document, and then select the ones for the additional pages you want to append to the current PDF file as follows:

1. In the Acrobat 6 Document window, display the Web page whose links you want to use for downloading new pages.
2. Choose Advanced➪Web Capture➪View Web Links. The Select Page Links to Download dialog box opens.
3. Click the URLs in this list for all the Web pages you want to add to the current PDF file. To select multiple individual URLs, Ctrl+click them. To select a continuous range of URLs, click the first one and then Shift+click the last one in the range. To select all the URLs for downloading, click the Select All button.
4. Click the Download button to add the Web pages for the selected URLs to the current PDF file. Note that if you don’t want to select individual links and are sure you want to download and append all pages linked to the current Web page displayed in Acrobat 6, choose Advanced➪Web Capture➪Append All Links on Page.

Modifying the Web capture conversion settings

Before capturing Web pages from a Web site, you can modify the conversion settings that tell Acrobat how to treat their content in the new PDF file. To do this, click the Settings button on the bottom-right side of the Create PDF from Web Page dialog box. (To open the Create PDF from Web Page dialog box, choose File➪Create PDF➪From Web Page.) Clicking the Settings button opens the Conversion Settings dialog box, The General tab is divided into two areas: File Type Settings and PDF Settings. In the File Type Settings area, you see a list box listing all the types of text and graphics files that are downloaded and converted in the new PDF file.

The only settings that you can modify in this list are the HTML and Plain Text settings. When you click either one of these types, the Settings button to the right of the list box becomes active.
When you click the Settings button when HTML is selected in the list box, Acrobat opens an HTML Conversion Settings dialog box, where you can control the default layout, colors, and fonts displayed in the Web pages you capture. Don’t mess with any of these settings if your purpose is to do a design review of the Web pages you’re about to capture because these changes could prevent users from experiencing the pages as the designers intended. The PDF Settings area in the Web Page Conversion Settings dialog box contains the following four check box options:

• Create Bookmarks: When selected, Acrobat automatically creates bookmarks for each Web page you download, using the page’s title as the bookmark name. Note that if a page doesn’t have a title, Acrobat uses the page’s URL address as the bookmark name.
• Create PDF Tags: When selected, Acrobat creates and stores a hierarchical structure in the PDF file that tells special screen-reading software for the visually impaired how to sequence the various Web page elements for reading at large magnification. The support for screen readers is part of Acrobat 6’s new group of Accessibility features designed to enhance the usability of the software for people with disabilities.
• Place Headers and Footers on New Pages: When selected, Acrobat creates page headers and footers that display the title of each Web page in the header at the top of the page and the URL of the page in the footer at the bottom.
• Save Refresh Commands: When selected, Acrobat saves a list of the URLs for all the pages captured in the PDF file that it can use to later check for updated content. You must have this conversion option selected when you capture Web pages if you want Acrobat to be able to automatically download new versions of the Web pages when it detects updated content.

Modifying the Web capture preferences

When you download and save Web pages as PDF files in Acrobat 6, the program uses a set of default capture settings that you can modify. To change the Web capture settings, choose Edit➪Preferences or press Ctrl+K (Ô+K on the Mac) to open the Preferences dialog box. Click Web Capture in the scroll list on the left side of the Preferences dialog box to view those options.
You can modify the Web Capture default settings by changing any of the following options:

• Verify Stored Images: This setting tells Acrobat how often to check online for updates to the images on the Web pages that you’ve captured in your PDF files. When the default setting, Once Per Session, is selected, Acrobat automatically checks for updates just once when you first open the PDF file (provided that you have Internet access at that time). You can change this setting by selecting either Always (for continuous checking) or Never on its drop-down list.
• Open Weblinks: This setting indicates whether Acrobat should download and save new Web pages in Acrobat when you click their Web links or simply display the pages in your Web browser. Note that the Specify Weblink Behavior dialog box inherits the setting you select here as its default (which you can override by holding down the Shift key when you click a Web link).
• Show Bookmarks Panel When New PDF File (Created from Web Page) Is Opened: This check box tells Acrobat whether or not to display the Navigation pane with the Bookmarks palette selected when you first open a PDF file with the captured Web pages. Deselect this check box when you don’t want to give up valuable viewing real estate in the Document window to the Navigation pane. Note that Acrobat creates bookmarks for the downloaded Web pages whether or not this check box is selected.
• Skip Downloading Secured Pages: The radio buttons under this heading indicate whether or not Acrobat should skip over the downloading of password-protected Web pages on the site you’re capturing. Select the Always radio button to have the program immediately skip over all such pages. Select the After radio button and specify the number of seconds in the associated text box to have the program stop and prompt you for the site’s password dialog box for the number of seconds specified, only to then automatically skip the downloading of that page and continue downloading other pages if you don’t respond to the prompt.
• Reset Conversion Settings to Defaults: This button resets all the conversion settings to their original values (see the following section for information on changing the conversion settings).

Creating Web links in a standard PDF file

You can have Acrobat 6 convert all complete URL addresses (ones that follow the full format that includes http:// in the address) entered in a standard PDF file (one not created with the Web Capture feature) into active hyperlinks by choosing Advanced➪Links➪Create from URLs in Document. To have Acrobat scan all the pages of the document for URLs to convert to live Web links, click the OK button. To have the program convert the URLs on just some of the pages in the PDF document, select the From radio button and enter the page number of the first and last page in the From and To text boxes, respectively.
After Acrobat 6 has converted the URLs on the specified pages of the PDF file to active links, you can follow the links by clicking them with the Hand-with pointing-finger mouse pointer. Note that when following the Web links you add in this manner, Acrobat uses the Web link behavior that’s in effect at that time. This is indicated by the icon that’s added to the Hand-with-pointing-finger mouse pointer: The appearance of a plus sign (+) means the page will be downloaded and added to the PDF file, whereas a W indicates that the page will open in your Web browser.