Printing larger than A3

[kyle.lan]

I am using PDF24 to print CAD files to PDF, but I cannot seem to be able to print larger than A3. Is this the maximum size, or is there a setting I am missing?

I am using windows 7 64bit.

[pdf24]

Normally larger papers are supported. It depends in the installed printer. If you had older version of the software installed try the following:

1. Manually delete the PDF24 printer.
2. Reinstall the PDF24 Creator.

This ensures that the printer driver is installed which supports files larger than A3.

In printer settings you can see the maximum and minimum paper sizes..

[kyle.lan]

I followed your advise and uninstalled the PDF24 printer, then reinstalled PDF24 Creator. Still it did not work. I even went further and uninstalled the printer driver from 'Print Management', uninstalled PDF24 Creator, then reinstalled PDF24 Creator, but still no pages bigger than A3. Any further advise?

The funny thing is, a college of mine has the exact same computer as me, and he installed it and got page sizes all the way up to A0.

[pdf24]

Please ensure that xou have the right printer driver. The driver must be PDF24 PDF.

You can see the driver in printer management. Open the properties of the PDF24 printer and there is a field model. The model must be PDF24 PDF. If you have a different name there please report me.

[freesbee98]

I am experiencing a very strange behavior of pdf24 (version 5.4.0).
I am testing a deployment on several workstations (I would like to substitute the competitor FreePDF_XP which cannot be successfully deployed and offers much less features). Deployment works perfectly, here are our deployment options:

msiexec /i pdf24-creator-5.4.0.msi NSTALLDIR="%ProgramFiles(x86)%my_path_to_pdf24" AUTOUPDATE="No" DESKTOPICONS="Yes" FAXPRINTER="No" /qn

The driver of the printer is properly "PDF24 PDF". The funny part is that on certain workstations some page formats seem to be hidden. Even more strange, if I create a new local printer on the pdf24 port \\.\pipe\PDFPrint assigning the old driver FreePDF_XP (still present on the system) I get in those printers the full list of page formats:

A0

A1

A10

A2

A3

A4

A4small

A5

A6

A7

(...)

...while on the real pdf24 printer I have sometimes the full list, sometimes a restricted list.
Does anybody know how page formats get hidden?
I can give all details of this suspected malfunctioning.

Thank you in advance

[pdf24]

Strange..
I've never heard of that before..

Please ensure the the printer driver is always PDF24 PDF, even on the workstations with the restricted options.

What I can image is that the printer driver could not be installed correctly and that an alternative driver is used as fall back driver.

Please check that.

There is also an printer driver install log file in the install folder of the PDF24 Creator, name prnInstPDF. You can send me the file to forum@pdf24.org and then I can analyse a bit, why the PDF24 printer could not be installed.

[freesbee98]

The printer driver seems to be properly installed: If I go to the printer properties/advanced, the driver listed is exactly "PDF24 PDF" (on all workstations).

I forgot to mention: all workstations are Win7 x64 (Pro/Ent), and I have both examples by Pro and Ent of pdf24 working properly and non properly (of course with the same install script).

I compared the prnInstPDF.log of two machines, one where page formats are properly shown, another one where they are not:
"The files are identical" was the answer from UltraCompare 🙁
I sent them anyway, maybe they will help somehow.

My personal feeling, is that somehow certain page formats get hidden on certain drivers. For example: on certain workstations I also have Acrobat, and it gives exactly the same problem. Since Acrobat is giving me the possibility ot create custom page sizes, I tried to add the sizes I need. Nevertheless, when I try to "add custom paper size" naming it A1 (or A1 or A0) I get the answer

Not allowed to modify system or printer defined paper size (A1).

Only user defined paper size can be modified or deleted

(this happens also if I run things with elevated privileges)
That's why I came to the conclusion that certain paper sizes get somehow hidden on certain drivers, and so far, even if I have been searching like hell, I didn't find anything on the topic.
So, does anyone know where are these "printer defined paper sizes" stored??

[freesbee98]

So we went ahead with deployment on 30 test computers, and so far we have checked about by 60% of results:

on 4 computers everything works fine (all page formats available)
on 14 computers we had to change the driver of the pdf24 printer to FreePDF_XP in order to get the possibility to print bigger than A3.

The bad news, is that we do not see any pattern in this!!
Anybody has ideas?

[freesbee98]

...so as I promised I went ahead with installations and testing. I'm writing here these information to help the pdf24 admin in finding out this problem (nevertheless he is not alone with this: also Adobe has the same problem) 😕

About 40% of workstations are working properly. The remaining did not show A2, A1 and A0. For those workstations the only possible workaround was to substitute the "PDF24 PDF" printer driver with the "FreePDF_XP" printer driver. Of course that is not the solution of the problem.

Today I also got in touch with Adobe Support, because I am experiencing exactly the same problem with Acrobat (again, replacing the "Adobe PDF Converter" driver with the "FreePDF_XP" driver worksaround).

The problem is well known by Adobe, and I reported the answer I got from them in the Adobe forum. If anybody is interested, here is the link:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5361706

Now my personal opinion 😉
At this point I am 100% sure that the A1, A0 (and sometimes A2) formats are present in the system but get hidden from some obscure entity. I have searched the registry like hell, but without any result. I do not know the MS OS well enough to know where these settings get saved, but I hope that pdf24 admin can use this information to focus and possibly solve the problem.

Just as an additional info: on one workstation where pdf24 is working perfectly (within the 40% good), the same issue happened with the driver of the "HP DesignJet 800PS". So I tend to believe that is more "windows-related", therefore configurable. I hope some specialist can find it.

I am of course ready to give to the developers any necessary information and statistic to solve the issue. 8)

[freesbee98]

I can confirm that on a fresh installation of Win7 x64 the pdf24 installs properly, showing all available paper formats.

In my specific case I installed the version 5.4.0 via deployment (startup script). I will prepare soon the update to 5.6.0 and report how it behaves.

[Stefan Ziegler]

Reason why formats A0 and A1 are not displayed
Please check if other PDF printers are or were installed. We have received a message that e.g. the installation of FreePDF affects the formats A0 and A1. In the PDF24 printer the formats A0 and A1 are also defined and should be available. If you install PDF24 on a system which did not have FreePDF installed before, then the formats should also be available. Please check if other PDF printers were installed before. This could be the reason why the formats are not available.

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