Printing to PDF/Export to PDF taking an age to complete

Question

Hi all,

I have a Pro project that has a lot of layers. I need to produce a lot of PDF plans from the map frame everyday but both the print (to PDF ) or Export to PDF takes far too long to be of use. I would say on average each plan is taking between 5-10 mins. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this process to run so slowly? I work for a Council and all the layers are stored on the SDE or as map services in portal. This isn't a problem specific to me, all employees have the same issue.

Thank you

Dave

DougGreen · Answer

Hi @MegCbrl, Pro has improved greatly since this post. I would check a few different things now. Have you identified a single layer whose labels are causing the long export time? If so, feel free to post it in a reply and we can take a look. It would help to know if it's using Arcade or Python or if there's something in the labelling expression that's causing it. If it's a pretty simple label expression, how many features are being drawn and how complex is the label symbol (callouts, etc.). Also, I had this happen once and found out someone had pasted an emoji character into a field value and that was causing it trouble when sending that to the PDF.

MegCbrl · Answer

Hi @DougGreen I know it's been almost 4 years but I am having an issue with exporting my PDF because of the labels. I found out because I turned the labels off and it exported smoothly. With it on, it won't even export 1 page. Is there a way to fix this?

AubriOtis · Answer

2.8 had some of the big changes made so it's good that you are using that version. Later versions will have even more speed improvements, with the not-yet-released 3.1 having some significant changes to improve export time.

In the meantime, you could try exporting via python to see if that is faster. When you export via python the export runs in the front of the application. When you export via the pane the export runs behind-the-scenes. Behind the scenes is nice because you can continue working in Pro, but it does take a little more processing. Sometimes Python's export can be faster.