OpenLab Report PDF Not Generating

Hello,

I updated the tags on this post to increase visibility. 

If you are able to automatically print reports in other formats, my first thought was that there is an issue with the PDF-XChange 6 printer that ChemStation uses to generate .pdf reports but that would not explain why this only affects automatic report generation. 

If you reprocess the result set in Data Analysis, do the .pdf reports get generated? Or do you need to manually print a report in order to trigger their creation? 

Have you verified that your report setpoints are identical in both your Master method and sequence (processing) method? If the reporting parameters were only updated in a result set's sequence method, then they are not transferred to the Master method unless you go to Method>Update Master Method or reprocess your result set if you are choosing to automatically update your Master method after processing in your sequence parameters. 

Hello,

I updated the tags on this post to increase visibility. 

If you are able to automatically print reports in other formats, my first thought was that there is an issue with the PDF-XChange 6 printer that ChemStation uses to generate .pdf reports but that would not explain why this only affects automatic report generation. 

If you reprocess the result set in Data Analysis, do the .pdf reports get generated? Or do you need to manually print a report in order to trigger their creation? 

Have you verified that your report setpoints are identical in both your Master method and sequence (processing) method? If the reporting parameters were only updated in a result set's sequence method, then they are not transferred to the Master method unless you go to Method>Update Master Method or reprocess your result set if you are choosing to automatically update your Master method after processing in your sequence parameters. 

Hi ryoboyle,

Thanks for the quick response. I was able to get into the lab to test these out today with the following results:

By recalculating the result set in Data Analysis, the .pdf reports still are not generated. The .txt file is, however. We have to manually right-click on the run and choose Print Report to print as a .pdf.

I was unable to use the "Reprocess Sample" method of the Walkup software as it couldn't find my samples (I'm assuming this has to do with it running as sysadmin).

I switched the Master Method to the sequence processing method I was using to ensure they were the same and submitted a sample with the same results, .txt report being generated, but no .pdf report.

I also utilized the Update Master Method after setting back to the standard method and still the same results.

I also checked the configuration of the sequence being used:

Lastly, I duplicated a sequence file and modified it to Print individual reports for each run "As specified here:" with "file" and ".PDF", ".TXT", and ".HTM" selected, then submitted another sample. In this situation, a .txt report was generated, but no .pdf or .htm (assumption is that it utilized the method configuration over the sequence configuration?).

This is definitely leading me down the path of something being wrong with the PDF printer - are there any log files that are generated that I can take a look at?

I also noticed an odd behavior - if I use the right-click -> Print Report option and hit cancel in the file dialog box that appears, I get the following:

Full text details below:

Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems. , with page file : C:\Users\althea\AppData\Local\Temp\P3D4F51.tmp
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems.
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems. , with page file : C:\Users\althea\AppData\Local\Temp\P3D4F90.tmp
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems.
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems. , with page file : C:\Users\althea\AppData\Local\Temp\P3D504D.tmp
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems.
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems. , with page file : C:\Users\althea\AppData\Local\Temp\P3D50FA.tmp
Initial printing problem, 202.
System resources are low and/or device has problems.

I'm not sure if this is related or not. If I don't hit cancel, it doesn't appear and it does print to .pdf without an issue.

Hello,

Another test that you can run to test the PDF generation is to print to the screen to see if a print preview window appears and, if so, if it is displayed in a separate report viewer window. 

If this is an issue with the PDF-XChange printer then the only steps that I know of to resolve it is to reinstall PDF-XChange. The installer can be found on Disk 1 of the OpenLab ChemStation installation media. 

Something else to check would be to verify that Adobe Reader is selected as the default .pdf app in Windows. If not, try making it the default .pdf app and see if there is any difference in the .pdf report creation or printing to screen. 

I ran a test where I set the report destination to Screen and File:

Again, no file was generated, however, the report did generate on screen:

I also verified that Adobe Reader is set as the default PDF application:

I then found the USB installation media and ran the installer (installed as free version):

<drive letter>:\Disk1\Tools\PDF XChange\PDFX6SA_sm.exe

After a reboot, I reran a sample and lo and behold, a PDF was generated! So, the problem was that the PDF X-Change 6 was never installed on our system.

Thank you for your assistance in troubleshooting!

Cheers,
  Drew