PDF Generator considerations

The following topics address issues encountered with Adobe® LiveCycle® PDF Generator 11 and their respective resolutions.

Configure Acrobat to run Microsoft Office macros

PDFMaker disables macros while converting Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel documents to PDF using PDF Generator, even when you have enabled macros in the File Type Settings using Administration Console.

To prevent PDFMaker from disabling the macro, you must set the value for the following registry to 0:

  • Microsoft Word: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\PDFMaker\10.0\Word\Settings\DisableMacro

  • Microsoft Excel: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat\PDFMaker\10.0\Excel\Settings\DisableMacro

For more information about this known issue with Acrobat, see http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/877/cpsid_87775.html.

Configuring PDF Generator to convert MS Office files to PDF format

It is a known issue that on some LiveCycle servers, a DCOM permission policy must be modified to use PDF Generator to convert Microsoft Office application files successfully. Otherwise, the following error message appears:

INFO [STOUT] com.jniwrapper.win32.com.ComException: COM object method returns error code: 0x80004005; E_FAIL (Unspecified error)

Microsoft has documented the required steps in a knowledge base article on the Microsoft Help and Support site.

Known issue when a LiveCycle server is accessed over a Telnet session

Native to PDF conversions fail with an error when you access a LiveCycle server running on Windows Server 2008 using the Telnet service and start the application server using a batch script.

To prevent this issue, start the Telnet service with the Allow service to interact with desktop option selected. You can select this option when you modify the properties of the Services panel in Windows Server 2008.

Resolving paths when converting Excel files to PDF file

When you use PDF Generator to convert an Excel file to a PDF file, and the Excel file contains a file name and path function (&[Path]&[File]) in the header or footer, unexpected results may occur. When converting the file, PDF Generator copies it to a temporary location on the LiveCycle server and performs the conversion on that copy. As a result, the file name and path functions in the Excel document resolve to the temporary file name and location, and those values appear in the generated PDF file.

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