[tcarp]

I run QB on an EX laptop. I sometimes send files, via email, to my Mac. Every PDF file I've created so far is horizontally truncated when I get it on the Mac. In other words, it's as if the right margin of the PDF file was near the center of the page and all data to the right of that point is lost.
I have the current versions of Acrobat on both systems.
My first thought was: is there a page setup default for PDF output files from QB that I have set wrong?
Thanks
Tom

[machenry]

Another person posted on this recently, but never came back to respond, please help to clarify what you're seeing:
- you're creating the problem PDFs using what version of QuickBooks for Windows?
- have you ever opened the PDFs on your Windows machine before attaching them? Were they okay?

[tcarp]

I'm using QB Pro 2004. When I create certain PDF files the text in the files is truncated on the right side. It appears that this happens when creating PDFs from reports (the one I just ran was a Pending Invoice report), however, I don't seem to have the problem with PDFs created from Invoices or POs.
Let's take the Pending Sales report as an example. In QB I display the fields Type, Date, Num, Name, Amount and Memo. Everything looks fine. When I create the PDF and then open it with Acrobat 6.0 on the PC (before I send to the Mac) it displays Type, Date, Num, Name, Amount and no Note. It show that there is only 1 or 1 pages.
In the above test, the cutoff on the page appeared to be at a column boundary. When I run a similar test using an A/R Aging Summary I actually get truncated data (i.e. the text of a number in one of the columns is actually cut off so you don't see all the text of single charaters (i.e. the rightmost digit in the "1-30" column is cut off). Again, Acrobat shows 1 of 1 pages and the body of the report has been shifted toward the center of the page.
The A/R Aging Summary report is only one page wide, so I ran another test with a report much wider. This one is an Item Price List report I built. It has quite a few fields of Item data. When this one is saved as a PDF, again I get truncated text (including partial characters). What's interesting is that it appears that whole fields are also being ignored. In other words, when I page down to see the second page (horizontally) on the right, 3 or 4 columns of data are not being displayed.
It's as if the first (leftmost) pages of the reports are being truncated just right of the center of the page and all remaining data on that page is blanked out.
Hope I did an OK job in describing the symptom
Thanks
Tom

[machenry]

Very helpful, thanks. Since this is happening in QB for Windows, it's not familiar to me as would be the case for a Mac version. The fact that some PDF files create OK while others are clipped seems to indicate that PDFs may be created differently for reports vs. invoices and POs. Let me see if I can find someone at Intuit to verify this behavior.
I assume that you've updated your software with all of the downloadable patches from Intuit?! Please verify this is the case.

[tcarp]

Tnanks for the reminder that this is a Mac forum. Sorry about that. Since I first saw the symptoms when the PDF was emailed to the Mac I thought there might be something there.
I think I'm current on Pro but I'll check later today (on the way out the door right now.) After any updates I'll rerun tests and edit the post.
Thanks again
Tom

[tcarp]

Checked for updates on all products (QB, Acrobat) and all appear to be current.
I do have an old problem with files on the Mac I'd like you to think about. It turns out that POs created on the PC and then saved as PDFs do not transport well to the Mac. It turns out that the files, which can be opened on the PC, do not open on the Mac. Instead I get an error message from Acrobat that "there was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired." I've recreated the file a number of times and get the same error.
Both the PC and the Mac are running Acrobat 6.0.2.
Note that Preview on the Mac can display and print the PO.
All this indicates to me that there is a problem reading PDF files created by QB Pro in Acrobat on the Mac. Do you have problems when you create them using the Mac version of QB?
Tom

[machenry]

Thanks again for your thorough notes. I have seen cases on the Mac where PDF files can be opened by Acrobat or Preview, but not both. I think it's a function of the code used to actually create the PDF file.
With Mac OS X, the code to create PDFs is built into the operating system, so it can be 'called' without reinventing it. With Windows, there have been a number of different ways to create a PDF depending on the OS version [I don't know the specific details] - some developed by Adobe or Microsoft, others written by independent software programmers. My hypothesis with QB Win is that the code for creating invoices & POS as PDFs and the code for creating reports as PDFs is different [I believe they were delivered in two separate QB releases], which is why you get different results.