Export to PDF Fails

Your template uploaded, and you can edit it online, but it fails when you try to export the PDF.
Yes, this does happen, and much as we hate to say it, it's even occasionally a glitch on our end. Much more likely, though, is a font problem, so before we start digging through server logs and looking for bugs that aren't there, we ask that you do some troubleshooting on your own.

· First off, make sure you click the Preview button for every page in the document and look closely to be sure it shows what you expect. Look for things like missing or incorrect characters -- those are a dead giveaway for a font problem.

· Next, try a different font, just for the sake of diagnosis. If it works with the wrong font, but not the one you want, it's a font problem again.

Fonts are really miniature programs, and a font that worked yesterday may not work today in a different template, or even the same template, if the editing asks the font to do something that was not asked of it before. I mentioned missing characters above -- if you never use a character that is not included in the font it may work just fine, even in your testing (and you should always do a test on a new template, right through exporting the PDF), and then suddenly fail when someone types an ampersand where you didn't expect it because the font doesn't include the ampersand glyph.

· And please don't attempt to make faux bold or italics by adding a stroke to the glyphs or adjusting the slope. If you need bold or italics, you need fonts that have bold or italic character sets.

How do you minimize the possibility of a font problem? First, use quality fonts from reputable font foundries. "Freebie" font sites are full of badly made fonts that are more likely to cause problems. Second, check the glyph complement. Be sure the font includes glyphs to support every language you expect to need, and all the punctuation. Third, use OpenType fonts, if possible. OpenType is a relatively new standard and the fonts will be Unicode compliant. OpenType fonts can also contain many more glyphs than the older font formats. PrintUI also supports the use of Windows format TrueType fonts, which should also work on Mac OS X systems, but you run the risk with older versions of many TrueType fonts that they are not Unicode compliant and you may see character mapping errors or outright failures. You cannot use Postscript Type 1 fonts in either Macintosh or Windows format, Mac format TrueType, or Mac .dfont fonts with PrintUI.

While it is possible to convert fonts from one format to another using a font utility there is no guarantee that the converted font will be trouble-free. Also, remember that many font licenses do not permit any sort of alteration, and of course, PrintUI requires that any font you upload must be licensed for server use.