Preview doesnt let me create pdfs since catalina

Yes, it's a problem when you have a vendor driver as the default printer in Preview. This is new to Catalina because Apple now allows the vendor PDEs to be shown in their proprietary PDEs instead of in Printer Features. The only app this affects is Preview, and there are several workarounds above.

I just spoke to Apple upper level tech support and was told this is a known issue and Apple is working on a fix.

“It just says something...”

what that specific something is may help us figure out the problem.

Can you post a screenshot of the error message?

Let me try to detail the process:

Screenshot many pictures

Select all screenshots on desktop, right click and choose Open With Preview

Choose Print > Save as PDF (bottom left of the print menu) > name the file and Save to desktop

Normally this should create one single PDF with multiple pages with the individual pictures.

However, since the update to Catalina, it gives the error already mentioned and shown on previous posts.

So no PDF created.

If I instead of printing we choose "Export as PDF" this will convert just the selected one picture out of all (2, 5 10, no matter how many) to PDF.

In my line of work, I can have the need to convert dozens of pictures to one pdf at the time, multiple times a day, so this not working is a major issue.

Hope this helps clarify.

Thanks

"It gives me an error"... what is the error message, exactly? Post a screenshot if possible

Also, where are you trying to save the pdf? In another thread a problem with saving to the desktop was mentioned. Are you saving to the desktop, or some other folder? Try saving to a different location - any difference?

FWIW, I print to pdf just about every day, and Catalina did not change that for me.

I use "Print -> Save as PDF" to extract only selected pages of a file, so Export doesn't work for me. While it is resolved, I have to make a copy of the original file, and delete the pages I don't need

Have you tried any of the workarounds offered above? is your selected printer added with a vendor driver?

To further test the original issue, I created a Temp user with standard permissions and tried to Save As a PDF of a single screen shot on my Desktop and I got the same error message “error while printing.”

Hi Luis,

It doesn't give any specifics when it errors out. It just says something about an error printing. To be clear, this is only happening with Preview as far as I know. You can print to PDF from a web browser or document or email, but not from Preview App.

Fair enough! He's what the error is. If you can glean anything from this let me know! Incidentally this is the least helpful error message I've seen on a MAC. I flashed back to my Windows days when I saw this.

This doesn't solve anything.

I have this problem and need an urgent fix as most of my work requires that i screenshot many pictures, convert these into one pdf with "save as pdf".

Exporting to PDF only exports one picture of the file, when i can have dozens to convert.

Seems that lately every OS update brings more problems every time.

This update made me think of reverting back to windows.

I don’t understand how it is different for you than it was before. You can take many images and print to pdf in one go. You can also take pdf files and add, remove and reorder pages. What exactly is not working?

I was really praying that option 3 would help me, but this has not fixed the issue.

My current line of thought:

On the last 3 OS release, every time I updated OS directly I've encountered issues. Most of these were only fixable with a clean install of the OS (format, usb pen with most recent os version, fresh install everything, go to Time Machine get all my files, etc).

Seems this will be my last option. But bearing in mind this is a work computer, the idea of re sync Gmail, dropbox, etc just makes me shiver. I can't waste a full day getting everything setup again.

Thanks anyway for your help.

Yes, deleted the printer, re-installed with new Canon drivers, no joy. And re-tried with previous drivers and still nothing.

I've noticed that if i restart the computer, it will work fine the first time. All other tries after will not work. Restart it again, will work well once, and not work the next attempts.

My next test will be Jblanchard's suggestion, but I'm starting to think this is not related to printers &/or drivers.

I spoke to soon. I still can't print JPGs into PDFs using Preview. I still can't open locked PDFs at all in Preview. Apple, this is basic stuff we need fixed.