Layout 2018 can't export PDF error "There was a problem exporting to this file"

Got it, just want to make sure people see it

Had the same issue with exporting to PDF. Worked great (for years) … and then one day it didn’t.
As far as I can tell ryant & darling_i2000 have it right. I was able to determine which page was causing the issue by exporting each page individually. After I found the problem page I was able to use ctrl A to show everything on the page … and sure enough there was one “ghost” on the page. I think it was perhaps left over from a dimension that I had revised … albeit sloppily. Regardless, once the “ghost” was removed Layout once again exported to PDF just fine. Thank you ryant & darling_i2000!

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Egodsey,

Glad this worked for you. I haven’t had this issue since so hoping it was a one time occurance.

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I’ve been a paying Pro user for quite some time and just experienced this problem where LO would not export a PDF. I combed through this thread and considered the issue may have come from a recent windows update (one or two days ago) but I had been exporting PDFs since the update with no issue…even on the same day I experienced my first problem.

I did see one post that caught my eye where the issue was resolved by converting an image over to a .jpg which reminded me I recently updated our company logo on the header from a .jpg to a .tif file. Once I converted the new logo over to a .jpg, I’m able to export PDFs again.

I will note that when first I updated LO with my new .tif logo I was still able to export a handful of PDFs before the error began…so that’s weird.

This doesn’t seem to be the end-all solution since some are trying to export blank pages and are still unsuccessful, but hopefully this provides more info towards a final fix.

Using SU & LO '19.
LO version 19.0.685 (64-bit)

Interesting.

Do you see the same thing with .tiff files if you update to the latest SU/LO 2019? (2019.3.xxxx) What about with 2020?

What operating system are you using? Please complete your profile.

Just a thought: Is your tif logo saved using the CMYK colour space? SketchUp only supports RGB, I don’t actually know about LayOut.

For a logo, I would prefer PNG instead of JPG.

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SU uses FreeImage and converts CMYK plus Alpha to RGBA automatically…

on export it would be rgba.tiff or rgba.png dependant on original format…

.tiff vs .tif could be the issue…

john

I ran into this problem for the first time in the last couple of days. I have been a Pro user for years and always have the latest version. I’m an architect and I tend to use previous projects to create new ones so I don’t have to create each drawing from scratch. The file that wouldn’t print was a floor plan with lots of stuff temporarily hanging out off the page. As I am on a tight deadline on this project I was pretty frustrated when this happened. I was finally able to solve this problem for me. I had read that someone had issues with ampersands, I believe, anyway that is what I remembered. I had one of those and a couple of other special characters added into a couple of dimension. So I turned off that layer and tried to export to PDF again. Sure enough, it exported just fine. So I created another dimension layer and started changing the layer of the dimensions, then I would turn off the dims layer that was causing the problem and export again. Finally, I had exported all of the dimensions to the new dimensions layer. It still would not export to PDF with the old dims layer turned on but when it was off it exported just fine. I tried a Ctrl A to select everything and there was nothing on the layer that I could see. I could only zoom out to a certain point, so I can’t say there isn’t something way off the page. I’m hoping this helps the SU team resolve this issue for everyone. I’d be glad to share the file with the SU team if they want it.

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I’ve had the same problem with several documents. I reinstalled my OS, sketchup and drivers 6 times in 2 two days with no luck at all. Finally after a while I decided to rebuild each document and make a “test export” after copying each layer, that’s when I discovered that the problem was in one particular layer, the one with the dimensions.

If i turned it off I could export the document with no problems at all.Very odd, but true.

Then I started to remove different groups of dimensions, to check which ones where the faulty ones, but I had so many that I just deleted them all and redid them again. Problem fixed (for me at least).

I hope I helped. Greetings!

I recently saw the same sort of thing in a file that was sent to me where a few dimensions caused a problem. Deleting them and remaking them took care of it. I wonder if it’s possible that something was deleted from the SketchUp model after those dimensions were placed originally and that caused the problem. No idea for sure since I didn’t see the file early enough.

It could be. Anyway, I think this procedure could help debugging documents with the same problem, isolating each layer, starting with the dimensions.

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I had the problem today for the first time. Nothing has change on my system recently. After a few tests, I realized the problem occurs only one page. I delete one by one element on that page and re-export (about 60 times) try finding the corrupt element. The problem occurs for all of the entire thing. I then rebuilt the all page from scratch (on a new page) without copy-pasting anything from the corrupt page. It works. The new page export pdf correctly. There was definitely something wrong with this old page. And the weirdest thing is once I was done with the new page, I didn’t even have to delete the old corrupt page, it disappear by it self. Ouuuuuuu! that is a spooky problem! Anyway, I hope I can help someone with my story. I’m on Win10, GTX1070, SketchUp Layout 2020.

Possibly it was a dimension on that page. There have been other reports of even just one weird dimension causing the problem. Deleting that dimension and replacing it with a new one has fixed it in other cases.

This just happened to me again with another file. Unzipped and found the “nan” and deleted that code. Rezipped and the file won’t open. I tried to rezip the untouched file and it doesn’t open either. So my question is HOW DO YOU REZIP IN ORDER FOR LAYOUT TO OPEN IT?

Thanks in advance,
Becca

Go into the folder that your previous unzip made. Select everything and zip compress it. Rename the zip from .zip to .layout.

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That worked! Thank you so much.

Okay Okay.I dont know if there is alredy a solution of this problem,but i found it my self.
So in a file that you cannot export to pdf, with a probability of 99.9%, there is an invisible element that you can select, but cannot see.
If you find it, well done, your file is cured and you can export it to pdf again

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Hi

I’ve just come across this problem, and it would not export any of the 3 pages in the document.

I tried deleting the Dimensions to no effect.

The thing that did seem to work was Releasing the Clipping Masks. It then Exported ok.

When I reapplied the Clipping Masks, it fails.

The thing is, I NEED the Clipping Masks.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Should my Clipping Masks be on different Layers?

Mike

I generally put the clipping masks on the same layer as the viewport.

You might try deleting and redrawing the shape for the clipping mask and see if it works. In the cases where I’ve seen this (files from others) that has worked for me.

Is this on your Mac or on your PC?

Hi Dave

This is on the PC :slight_smile:

Yes, I do normally put them on the same layer as the Viewport. I have just tried putting them on a different Layer, but that had no effect and it still failed.

There’s quite a few and they are not simple shapes, which is a pain to redraw them all.

I can Print to Adobe PDF, which works ok.

I’m assuming the Powers that be are working on this problem.

Mike

Mike