Preview will not print to PDF in Catalina

Question

Preview will not print to PDF in Catalina

I cannot print to PDF anymore via Preview. This started after upgrading from a 2019 15" MBP running Mojave to a 2019 16" MBP running Catalina. I use this preview feature often to combine several images into one PDF document (in this case I tried with several JPEGs, when that didn't work I took screen shots and it didn't work with the PNG files either). I read that a workaround is to use the export to PDF option. It unfortunately does not work the same in that the export option only exports one of the several selected images. This is the error I get after saving:

How can I resolve this?

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Dec 3, 2019 12:48 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

64,862 points

Dec 3, 2019 1:09 PM in response to froggiefingaz

This may seem unintuitive but try a different printer. Even if you are just creating a pdf and not actually sending stuff to a printer, the printer driver is still involved.

If you have only one printer installed try uninstalling and then recreating the printer. Odds are that you migrated an old printer driver that is not working correctly.

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Answer 2

Dec 5, 2019 11:51 AM in response to froggiefingaz

See the several other posts here, among them:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250743000

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250782649

The original printer is likely using a vendor driver. This is a known problem with Preview (and only Preview) when trying to Save as PDF with a printer added with a vendor driver. The printer you switched to is probably an AirPrint printer or off.

The other threads have other workarounds.

Your original printer will still behave as expected, just not when saving pdfs in Preview.

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Answer 3

Dec 4, 2019 1:47 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Switched to a secondary printer and followed the same steps and it worked.

Very strange because the original printer that was selected still seemed to be functioning fine - but I've only used the scanning function so far. Will try to re-install drivers.

Thank you!

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Preview will not print to PDF in Catalina

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