Mac Classis Acrobat Distiller/PDF ERROR 5751, how to fix?

February 10, 2005 8:21 AM

Acrobat Distiller/PDF Panic (Mac Classic 9.2) I can take Word files, and create .PS files, and then distill them into PDFs, but when I try to do it all in one step, ERROR 5751. Since the Web is of no help, is there someone here who can help?
posted by ParisParamus to computers & internet (21 comments total)

What do you mean by "do it all in one step"? Are you trying to drag Word files straight into Distiller?
posted by jjg at 8:25 AM on February 10, 2005

No. Before Sunday night, I was able to drag files to the PDF icon on my desktop, or set the chooser to the PDF setting, and "print" to PDF. Now something is corrupted. I've reinstalled the PostScript Printer Driver AdobePS 8.8 - English, but the error remains.
posted by ParisParamus at 8:43 AM on February 10, 2005

I think the Distiller installer will let you custom-install just the desktop printer. Reinstalling AdobePS probably isn't enough.

There's also the old standby of trashing your prefs and rebuilding the desktop.
posted by jjg at 8:53 AM on February 10, 2005

It's not the Distiller--the distiller works fine. It's something related to the Adobe PDF Driver (but not the driver itself)
posted by ParisParamus at 9:08 AM on February 10, 2005

Also, I don't have the install disc anymore.
posted by ParisParamus at 9:13 AM on February 10, 2005

The desktop printer was installed when you installed Distiller. No matter -- try this.
posted by jjg at 9:49 AM on February 10, 2005

I'd try deleting the Printer Driver's Prefs, set it up all over again, then try to create the PDF files. No matter what, PDF is dependent on a PS driver and if your preference files for the driver are wonky you could be in for some trouble.
posted by glyphlet at 9:52 AM on February 10, 2005

Slightly OT, but if necessary you do have alternatives.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 10:15 AM on February 10, 2005

JJG, I really appreciate your help. I'll try that tonight, when I'm back at my Mac.

What i'd love to know now is: how did you find that download? The Mac download page is this:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html

which points you to this:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=44&platform=Macintosh


and I don't see that download referenced on that page.
posted by ParisParamus at 10:57 AM on February 10, 2005

I hope it isn't cheating to ask, but if someone can recommend distiller settings that will create the most compact files of Word Documents ladden with tables, with NO reduction in image quality, I would love to here from you by e-mail.
posted by ParisParamus at 11:00 AM on February 10, 2005

Printing to PS and then distilling the resulting file is how I always did it, because the other way never worked right.
posted by kindall at 11:00 AM on February 10, 2005

Since it's not been mentioned yet in this thread, I suggest you just bite the bullet and upgrade to OS X. The majority of your OS9 apps will work fine. I still have a great Quark 4 --> PDF workflow in Classic, though it gets cranky from time to time, as you are experiencing here (thanks for that link also, JJF!)

The task you are talking about is trivial in OS X. Every OS X print dialog box has a "Save as PDF" button. (Of course you would need to pay the Micro$oft tax and get the OS X version of Office too).
posted by omnidrew at 11:23 AM on February 10, 2005

Omnidrew, thanks. a nice, business-deductible Powerbook is in my future. My understanding is that OS X comes with some PDF capabilities, free. What does that consist of? I think the first thing I'll do is run everything on my Olde iMac (Bondi Blue) in Classic (hopefully that's possible), and then, eventually, buy new OS X software.
posted by ParisParamus at 11:27 AM on February 10, 2005

PP: I Googled for adobe pdf desktop printer.
posted by jjg at 11:28 AM on February 10, 2005

Well, thanks, and shame on Adobe. Again, away from my Mac, I can only wonder why, if I deleted something corrupt, but then installed the wrong thing, I would still get the same error message.
posted by ParisParamus at 11:32 AM on February 10, 2005

The built-in PDF export on Mac OS X works, but it doesn't do any compression whatsoever. The files are huge compared to what you'd get with Distiller. There are shareware programs called PDF Shrink and PDF Compress that'll compress the PDFs for you.

However, the biggest flaw of Mac OS X's built-in PDF export is that it doesn't create bookmarks for you. You have to do that manually, and you need the full Acrobat package to do it, so you might as well just use Distiller. (Not all programs will output PostScript that Distiller can use to generate bookmarks, however. Adobe FrameMaker is one. Microsoft Word... is not.)
posted by kindall at 2:00 PM on February 10, 2005

Now, if only I knew what a PDF bookmark was?
posted by ParisParamus at 2:49 PM on February 10, 2005

AFAIK, all OS X documents are rendered the same way as PDFs.

kindall, you are correct that just printing to PDF in OSX produces larger files & does not let you access all the features of Acrobat...but it seemed to me that ParisP was looking for 1) an OS9 solution and 2) an easy solution.
posted by omnidrew at 4:31 PM on February 10, 2005

Yeah, and then we switched to talking about what PDF capabilities Mac OS X has when PP asked specifically that question.
posted by kindall at 5:12 PM on February 10, 2005

And bookmarks, in a PDF file, are like an outline of the document that appears in a separate pane of the PDF viewer window. Often they're used as a table of contents for navigating the file on-screen. If you're not using them, then the lack of them won't bother you.
posted by kindall at 5:14 PM on February 10, 2005

Thanks. I don't quite get what finally did it, but it's back to working! Apparently, as someone said above, the Print-To-PDF icon doesn't appear on the desktop until distiller is (manually) activated. Oy: a full hours of installing and deleting before discovering this. My little business feels like it's hanging by a thread. MUST HAVE NEW MAC...
posted by ParisParamus at 10:12 PM on February 10, 2005