PDF's cannot be saved anymore

[RageRiot]

A few staff members working on child reports have just said they cant save what they have edited.

 

The child report for our school this year have gone digital. we had an external company/person produce a PDF with forms that were editable and could be saved.

over the last couple of weeks things have been going great and I've been tasked with printing all reports that have been competed but here is the problem, one staff member earlier said that all the data in her reports for her class was blank but after clicking the forms/fields the text reapears, this is after our deputy head had completed her comments on the PDF's

 

Another member of staff has informed me that the deputy has a MAC and has done all her comments using a mac so since has rendered the PDf's unsavable since.

 

only alternative is to manually transfer the data (copy and paste) to a new blank form.

 

The reason for this extra editing is a result of proof reading and general corrections.

 

hopfully somone may have come accross this before

 

thanks

 

Bryan

[MaceZ4]

What application are you creating the reports in?

[AngryTechnician]

IIRC Mac programs can save PDFs natively so I wonder whether your deputy opened it in something other than Reader and used the built-in save to PDF, which would have stripped out the form data?

[RageRiot]

Thanks for the replies so far, I have no idea what app the PDFs were created in since it was outsourced. Our it coordinated arranged it.

 

Angry technician, I assumed our deputy just used adobe reader. She's not tech savy so I doubt she's got a PDF editor but I can't say for sure. It does seem as tho the form data has been altered.

 

All of the pdf's edited by her show up with blank form data until you select one of boxes and the text previously enterered shows up but this is all one box at a time. As soon as another txt box is selected the previously selected box goes blanks and the newly selected txt box displays text

[pete]

Bottom post:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/76288-pdf-sanity-check-needed-please.html

 

I'd lean towards the Mac breaking them by saving in Preview. Happened with a few coursework cover sheets for us.

[RageRiot]

Thanks Pete. So that pretty much confirms that the mac broke them ill tell the deputy not to use her mac on the rest.

 

There is a mention somwhere In that thread you posted that they won't print, is that correct? This is gonna tie up my week if that's the case

[pete]

Thanks Pete. So that pretty much confirms that the mac broke them ill tell the deputy not to use her mac on the rest.

 

There is a mention somwhere In that thread you posted that they won't print, is that correct? This is gonna tie up my week if that's the case

 

IIRC, it will print fields as blank on Windows once the Mac has mangled it by saving in Preview. OS X can still print the pdf saved in Preview.

 

So long as the DH prints them off using her Mac, she hasn't lost any work.

 

My edict to our Media dept was "Write and print your cover sheets on ONE operating system".

 

edit: This was with Adobe Reader 10.0.1 and whatever version of Preview ships with Snow Leopard

[sted]

if they will print ok from a mac can you install a pdf printer on the mac and print them back to a new pdf file wont be editable but should be ok to print

[RageRiot]

thanks sted but that might be getting a little far fetched, I'm probably just going to open the origonal pdf and copy all relevent data from the other pdf's filled in by the teachers. besides I've no experience with a mac, I'm a PC guy. maybe when I'm financially stable I'll invest in a mac but until then I'm clueless.

I've just tried to hook up one of ours staffs mac book to the photocopier and is just spat out an endless amount of blank pages with 1 or 2 with garbled text. I've asked the deputy to use a pc/laptop to continue editing the pdf's for now then maybe if I'm still here next year we will look at this in advanced.

[RageRiot]

thanks sted but that might be getting a little far fetched, I'm probably just going to open the origonal pdf and copy all relevent data from the other pdf's filled in by the teachers. besides I've no experience with a mac, I'm a PC guy. maybe when I'm financially stable I'll invest in a mac but until then I'm clueless.

I've just tried to hook up one of ours staffs mac book to the photocopier and is just spat out an endless amount of blank pages with 1 or 2 with garbled text.

 

@pete so the deputy printing them isnt an option and I dont think she brings hers in anyway.

 

I've asked the deputy to use a pc/laptop to continue editing the pdf's for now then maybe if I'm still here next year we will look at this in advanced.

 

Although I'm an IT technician at the school I've been asked to print the reports onto A3 so I've had to setup the photocopier to be printable to with an access code, I've been instructed not to allow any other staff to print to the photocopier until further notice.

[pete]

I've just tried to hook up one of ours staffs mac book to the photocopier and is just spat out an endless amount of blank pages with 1 or 2 with garbled text.

 

Most of our Macs tend to just work with the printers. With certain copiers (especially older Olivettis) there's a bit of swearing and driver searching involved. Bizhubs work without issue IME (or, our Bizhubs work with Snow Leopard, but it's ages since I faffed with them).