Excel to PDF produces multiple PDF's instead of one.

[DOsser]

I posted this about a year ago, received a reply that may have
involved a registry fix, successfully implemented the fix, and, since
it was no longer a problem, promptly neglected to save the
information. Now, after some reloaded software, the problem has
arisen once more and I don't have/remember the correction. I do
recall (I think) that the correction was on the Excel side of the
Excel/PDF equation.

So I humbly and ashamedly ask the same question again:

Configuration:
Adobe Acrobat Pro 6.01
Windows XP SP1
Excel 2003

I have an Excel spreadsheet with multiple sheets, each of which is a
single printed page.

When printing to the Adobe PDF Printer, I select "Entire Workbook"
from the initial print dialog. However, Acrobat distils this into a
separate PDF for each sheet.

Questions:
1) Is there any way to tell Acrobat to create a single PDF?

-DOSser

 

[meatshield]

I don't know the registry fix that people discussed earlier, but I ran
into a similar problem before(the workbook would be 100-150 sheets,
and it would be broken into 10-30 pdf files) . We managed to come up
with a solution that worked well for us, so hopefully it'll work for
you too. You mentioned that every sheet is a single printed page. If
you select all of the sheets then go to pagesetup->page and change the
options for paper size and print quality, it might work. Our PDF's
would choke whenever the page size or print quality was different. (We
picked letter and 600 dpi respectfully).

A few other (not as nice solutions):
You could try printing the page as a postscript file, then try making
the PDF from there.
You could use different software to make the PDFs (not ideal since you
obviously paid for acrobat already), but I've used some of the free
offerings and they didn't seem to choke on the same files that
Distiller had problems with.

I hope that helps.

(oh, I think I found your earlier question here:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...b36448f9?lnk=st&q=pdf&rnum=2#784e710bb36448f9)

 

[DOsser]

Thank you very much! And thank you for finding the other earlier one.
that was a somewhat different problem with Publisher, not Excel. I
had submitted the Excel problem as well (I actually copied this one
from my earlier sent file), and mis-remembered which problem got the
solution. The Publisher problem was solved, but I don't think I ever
got a response to the Excel problem.

I'll try your printer options and two-pass (Excel --> PS --> PDF)
suggestions this week and let you know what happens.

Thanks again for your efforts both in researching my older submissions
and for the detailed suggestions.

- DOSser

 

[meatshield]

Some links I found in the groups that seemed helpful:
http://groups.google.com/group/adob...bddeb8d3b48/d7053405e560729e#d7053405e560729e

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...excel+"multiple+pdfs"&rnum=8#2571d35b6326e3b0

http://groups.google.com/group/adob...excel+"multiple+pdfs"&rnum=6#5c5fe33e4c79c9da

 

[DOsser]

Some links I found in the groups that seemed helpful:
http://groups.google.com/group/adob...bddeb8d3b48/d7053405e560729e#d7053405e560729e

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...excel+"multiple+pdfs"&rnum=8#2571d35b6326e3b0

http://groups.google.com/group/adob...excel+"multiple+pdfs"&rnum=6#5c5fe33e4c79c9da

Some more really good material there - and right on target. I hadn't
thought of searching google groups for non-usenet servers such as the
Adobe forums.

Thank you again.

- DOSser

 

[DOsser]

Problem is solved, thanks to you!

Not elegant, but for the record:

What finally worked was the suggestion in the acrobat forum thread
thar you provided the link to. Specifically, printing to a .prn file,
then dropping the .prn file into (onto?) an Acrobat Distiller window,
which created a .pdf as desired.

It appears to be peculiarities in how Excel prints.

I tried various combinations of selecting all sheets, printing "all
sheets" vs printing "whole workbook", with changes to none, some, or
all of the page descriptions. None gave a single pdf, but there were
some odd results! In one case, the first 5 pages/sheets became a pdf,
followed the next 4, and the final 1. In another case, they became
pdf's in groups of 2, and a few other almost random groupings.

Anyway, the immediate problem is resolved, and I thank you again for
your efforts.

Gee. I wonder if Excel 2007, under Vista, with Acrobat 8, ...

- DOSser.