Re: Access "dies" printing PDFs

From: SA (~fake.address_at_nspm.com)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 08:10:29 -0400

Terry:

I work with the third party that produced the control you are using.

First, what version of Access are you using? Have you applied all the
service packs appropriate to that version along with the latest Jet Update?

A.) In looking at your code, the first thought (although it probably
doesn't impact it greatly,) is that you are opening a table rather than a
specific recordset that represents the records you want to output (i.e.
those represented by the form.) Relying on a record number to start from in
an open table is not always very reliable (unless the record number is an
auto number field, and even then it is not totally reliable to be set in
sequential fashion for all records, i.e. you can have non-continuous counts
between records.)

As an alternative, is there a SQL string that you can use to select the
records? E.g. a where a flag such as ReportSent = False, (you'd have to
update each record after you create the file and set this field to true), or
where RecordNumber >= X. This would give you a smaller recordset to
navigate in memory.

B.) If you report has images (i.e. JPEGs or Giffs) on it, then most versions
of Access have a memory leak bug that can cause a crash when the report is
run repeatedly. This can be helped by two things 1.) Change the image to a
bit map in a image editing program, or 2.) If you can do that then
substantially reduce the size of the image file on your report.

C.) Relative to Adobe Acrobat 6, it can be quite slow to output PDF files
given the complexity of the report, number of images on a report that it has
to rastorize etc. There may be a number of things that you can do to help
that issue in Acrobat's set up. To manage these, first open the printers
folder and select the Adobe Acrobat printer, right click and select its
printing preferences. Once there, try these things:

1.) Select the "Standard" conversion settings and select Edit; when the
Settings dialog appears, on the compatability setting, try reducing it to
Acrobat 3 or Acrobat 4. This will reduce the complexity of the commands
sent to the Adobe PDF printer.

2.) While you are editing the settings, try reducing the dpi setting to 600
dpi or so (standard printing); uncheck "optimize" for web view if the PDFs
will not be posted on a web server, since this setting causes Acrobat to
produce a larger file with "hints" placed throughout it to allow pages to be
downloaed one at a time on the web. If you use standard fonts in your
report (e.g. Arial and Times New Roman), then you can uncheck on the fonts
page "Embed all fonts".

Once you are done editing the conversion settings Adobe will prompt you to
save the settings asking you to rename the settings to some specific name.

3.) You can also change some basic settings for the Adobe PDF printer, that
may speed things up as well. Once you've save the settings, then click over
to the paper tab. Click the Advanced button. You'll notice that the dpi
there is normally set to 1200 dpi. You might try reducing this to 600
(check your report output, it may need to go back to 1200 for quality); also
under the Post Script options, you'll see that its set to "Optimize for
speed"; you might try setting this to "Optimize for portability" especially
has a lot of images.

D.) On last thing to try; but only after you've applied all service packs
and updates and backed up your db. That is to decompile your database
entirely to clean out any old code that it might contain that could be
causing problems. Here's how:

Before running the following procedure, make sure that you have backed up
your database.

a.) Create a short cut to the MSAccess.exe executable on your deskttop.
b.) Right click on the short cut and bring up its properties.
c.) In the Target box in the short cut, append the full path to your
database in quotations, followed by the /decompile switch

The target string would look something like this:

"%Path To MS Office%\Msaccess.exe" "c:\some directory\some file.mdb"
/decompile

Where %Path To MS Office% is the full path the full path to the MSAccess
executable.

d.) Hold down the shift key and run the short cut.
e.) Hold down the shift key and compact and repair your database.
f.) Open any module and fully compile the database.
g.) Again, hold down the shift key and compact and repair your database.

HTH 

-- 
Steve Arbaugh
ACG Soft
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/attac-cg
"TerryC" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message 
news:0f6101c46ec6$c15241f0$a601280a@phx.gbl...
> Dear All,
>
> I have an application that generates individual PDFs (for
> each record) from a report. I am using an Access library
> purchased from a third party to generate the PDFs using
> Acrobat 6.01.
>
> My two problems are "it is slow going" and after about 500-
> 700 records Access dies and wants to send an error report
> to MS. It repairs and compact OK (for another 500 or so
> records). The lack of any error code or indication of what
> is causing this is frustrating.
>
> I have to generate 10,000 - 30,000 pdfs per month and not
> being able to rely on Access to keep running means it can
> not be left over night.
>
> I am currenly able to generate about 7 PDFs per minute (in
> between crashes). I have posted the code I use below. I am
> not an experienced (or very good) coder so I am hopefull
> someone can see something stupid I've done that can be
> fixt.
>
> ==================================================
>  Dim SavePath As String
>    SavePath = Forms!Print.Text0
>    Dim response
>    With Application.FileSearch
>    .LookIn = SavePath
>    .SearchSubFolders = False
>    .FileName = "*.pdf"
>    If .Execute() > 0 Then
>    GoTo cont
>    Else
>        MsgBox "There were no files found."
>        GoTo cont2
>    End If
>
> cont:
>
> response = MsgBox("There were " & .FoundFiles.Count & _
>            " file(s) found. Proceed?", 4)
>        If response = vbYes Then
>        GoTo cont2
>        Else: GoTo end_pdf
>        End If
> End With
> cont2:
>    Dim objPDF As New PDFClass
>    Dim lngResult As Long
>    Dim oput As String
>    Dim rpt As String
>    Dim memb As String
>    Dim ref As String
>    Dim strt As Long
>
>    Dim conn As ADODB.Connection
>    Dim rsPDF As New ADODB.Recordset
>    Dim strCnn As String
>    Dim RecNo As Long
>    RecNo = Forms!Print.Text2 'starting record number
>    strt = Forms!Print.Text2
>    ' Open connection.
>    Set conn = CurrentProject.Connection
>    ' Open pdf source records
>    Set rsPDF = New ADODB.Recordset
>    rsPDF.Open "tax_lhc_members", conn, , , adCmdTable
>    rsPDF.MoveFirst ' go to first record
>    rsPDF.Move strt - 1 ' starts from record # on form
> print
>    Do While RecNo - 1 < Forms!Print.Text4 ' loop till end
> of file
>    ref = rsPDF![extra 10]
>    memb = rsPDF![extra 10] & ".pdf"
>    oput = SavePath & memb
>    rpt = "LHCtax_only_pdf"
>    Const PDFENGINE_PDFWRITER = 1 ' not sure ... does
> something?
>    With objPDF ' creates the pdf
>        .PDFEngine = PDFENGINE_PDFWRITER
>        .ReportName = rpt
>        .ReportWhere = "cstr([extra 10]) = " & ref
>        .OutputFile = oput
>        .PrintImage
>        lngResult = .Result
>    End With
>
> rsPDF.MoveNext
>    RecNo = RecNo + 1
> Loop
> Set objPDF = Nothing
> Set rsPDF = Nothing
>
> end_pdf:
> =================================================
>
> Any suggestions, ideas or anything will be greatly
> appreciated,
>
> Terry
>
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