PDF Migraine
April 6, 2008 9:34 PM Subscribe
Quickbooks Pro 2005, MS Outlook 2003, and an intermittent PDF e-mailing problem. The PDF's that are e-mailed often are blank when opened on the other end. Why?
My wife makes invoices in Quickbooks and saves them from within Quickbooks to PDF Files. Then from within Outlook she attaches them to e-mail for various clients, and then on to their clients clients after approval. The PDF's are fine on her end but arrive blank....sometimes.... Sometimes they show up fine at her clients for their approval but when she then sends them on they arrive blank. Sometimes she will attach two invoices and both are bad, and sometimes one is bad, and sometimes none are bad. Some people are on pc and some on mac but it shouldn't matter right? They are PDF's.
So it is getting a little embarrassing for her. We think it is Outlook somehow. If she sends these PDF's using only Yahoo webmail there is no problem. Why? She has her own e-mail account with her clients and uses outlook to send e-mail with that address so she doesn't want to switch to only using yahoo mail.
Any ideas bout how to fix this?
My wife makes invoices in Quickbooks and saves them from within Quickbooks to PDF Files. Then from within Outlook she attaches them to e-mail for various clients, and then on to their clients clients after approval. The PDF's are fine on her end but arrive blank....sometimes.... Sometimes they show up fine at her clients for their approval but when she then sends them on they arrive blank. Sometimes she will attach two invoices and both are bad, and sometimes one is bad, and sometimes none are bad. Some people are on pc and some on mac but it shouldn't matter right? They are PDF's.
So it is getting a little embarrassing for her. We think it is Outlook somehow. If she sends these PDF's using only Yahoo webmail there is no problem. Why? She has her own e-mail account with her clients and uses outlook to send e-mail with that address so she doesn't want to switch to only using yahoo mail.
Any ideas bout how to fix this?
Response by poster: tcv
1. Sending using Yahoo Mail or gmail. So we don't have a problem once Outlook is out of the loop.
2. The PDF is generated by Quickbooks.
3. She saves the invoice as a PDF to her hard drive.
4. She attaches to an e-mail within Outlook. Browse, select, attach, send.
5. I think most are using fairly recent versions of Adobe Reader and I know some upgrading was done to try and fix the problem.
I have been the willing recipient of some of these "bad" PDF's and cannot figure out what is going wrong. Keep in mind that all the PDF's are "good" until they are received in an e-mail generated by Outlook. Weird I know but there must be something I am not thinking of.
Thanks for your help!
posted by snowjoe at 6:03 AM on April 7, 2008
1. Sending using Yahoo Mail or gmail. So we don't have a problem once Outlook is out of the loop.
2. The PDF is generated by Quickbooks.
3. She saves the invoice as a PDF to her hard drive.
4. She attaches to an e-mail within Outlook. Browse, select, attach, send.
5. I think most are using fairly recent versions of Adobe Reader and I know some upgrading was done to try and fix the problem.
I have been the willing recipient of some of these "bad" PDF's and cannot figure out what is going wrong. Keep in mind that all the PDF's are "good" until they are received in an e-mail generated by Outlook. Weird I know but there must be something I am not thinking of.
Thanks for your help!
posted by snowjoe at 6:03 AM on April 7, 2008
Check this option:
1. Open Outlook.
2. Click Tools menu, then Options.
3. Go to Mail Format tab.
4. Click Internet Format button.
5. Is the following option checked or un-checked? "Encode attachments in UUENCODE..."
If so, uncheck it.
Cheers,
m
posted by tcv at 3:23 PM on April 7, 2008
1. Open Outlook.
2. Click Tools menu, then Options.
3. Go to Mail Format tab.
4. Click Internet Format button.
5. Is the following option checked or un-checked? "Encode attachments in UUENCODE..."
If so, uncheck it.
Cheers,
m
posted by tcv at 3:23 PM on April 7, 2008
Response by poster: tcv
The UUENCODE is not checked. This is getting pretty frustrating because there doesn't seem to be an answer. Today she sent an e-mail out that "never got there". Not a Quickbooks item. Just an Excel spreadsheet. Sent it out using yahoo web mail and all is good. It makes no sense to me.
posted by snowjoe at 8:06 PM on April 7, 2008
The UUENCODE is not checked. This is getting pretty frustrating because there doesn't seem to be an answer. Today she sent an e-mail out that "never got there". Not a Quickbooks item. Just an Excel spreadsheet. Sent it out using yahoo web mail and all is good. It makes no sense to me.
posted by snowjoe at 8:06 PM on April 7, 2008
Unfortunately, "never got there" could be something entirely different. It may not be, but it could be. Hard to say. Let's keep that in the back of our minds.
I have one question and one suggestion:
1. Is there any antivirus software on this machine? What is it?
2. Next time this happens, instead of sending through Yahoo/Hotmail, please put the document in a ZIP archive and resend. Stay with the recipient on the phone so they can check. Let me know what happens.
posted by tcv at 8:17 AM on April 8, 2008
I have one question and one suggestion:
1. Is there any antivirus software on this machine? What is it?
2. Next time this happens, instead of sending through Yahoo/Hotmail, please put the document in a ZIP archive and resend. Stay with the recipient on the phone so they can check. Let me know what happens.
posted by tcv at 8:17 AM on April 8, 2008
Response by poster: AVG Free is the antivirus software. I will zip the next time. Why didn't I think of that? I guess because I have never had difficulty sending PDF files before. I will post here as soon as I can try this, probably tomorrow or Thursday. Thanks again for your help!
posted by snowjoe at 5:36 PM on April 8, 2008
posted by snowjoe at 5:36 PM on April 8, 2008
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1. If someone reports that a PDF is blank, what is your method to correct this? Resend or regenerate the PDF, then send?
2. What are you using to create the PDF? Are you using a version of Quickbooks that has PDF generation? If not, are you printing to Acrobat Distiller?
3. In that, how are you generating the PDF? Printing? Saving?
4. How are you attaching the PDF into Outlook? Click, drag, drop? Insert, Attachment?
5. What versions of Acrobat Reader (or whatever) are the clients using to view the PDFs?
This is an odd problem and what you need is a test case, preferably a "bad" PDF that you can investigate and compare to a good one both before and after sending. You'd also need a willing recipient who is willing to be a test case so you can figure out where the problem is. I haven't heard of Outlook changing a PDF in such as way to as make something blank, but hey, there's always a first!
posted by tcv at 9:56 PM on April 6, 2008