1. Try and reboot the computer, log back in as Admin and run Essential Forms as an Administrator. You can also, right click on the Essential Forms shortcut and click “Run As Administrator” in the drop-down. Open a document and click File>Save As PDF.

If that doesn’t work, try #2.

2. Type "Printers and Scanners" in the “Type here to search” in the task bar.

Open Printers and Scanners. Check and see if you have an “MS Publisher Imagesetter” printer under the list of Printers & Scanners. MS Publisher Imagesetter is what we use to convert forms to PDF’s. If you don’t see it in the list or it might have been accidentally deleted, you can run the troubleshooter to try and repair the problematic printer:

Scroll down in the Printers & Scanners window.

Under Related Settings click on “Run the troubleshooter” (in blue).

In the dialogue window, “Which printer would you like to troubleshoot?”

Select “MS Publisher Imagesetter” from the list of printers, click “Next”.

Then, you will get a window asking to make MS Publisher Imagesetter the default printer, you can click “Skip this step”. Click Close. The print troubleshooter will attempt to clear the print queue and reset the print spooler. Click Close the Troubleshooter.

Restart your computer.

Open Essential Forms. Open a document and click File>Save As PDF.

Note: If MS Publisher Imagesetter doesn’t show up in the list of Printers and Scanners in the “Type here to search” in the task bar type Device Manager. In Device Manager select Print Queues. Select MS Publisher Imagesetter and Select Action> Update driver. Try to Save as PDF in Essential Forms.

If that doesn’t work try #3. 

3. PDF Printer Workaround

Otherwise, In EF with a form open, click File>Print Form. Click the drop-down arrow next to Name in the Print window. There should be other printer(s) to select that would save as pdf:

-Adobe PDF

-Microsoft Print to PDF

-Microsoft XPS Document Writer

Once you select an alternate PDF converter click OK and see if that works.

You might have to add a form name when saving as pdf now.

Or, you could investigate free/cheap PDF drivers online and download one.  Many of those install a print driver that could be selected when printing from Essential Forms, generating a PDF instead of a printout. Maybe that would work.

We haven’t made any programming changes to the File>Save As PDF feature. Essential Forms makes a call to Windows when clicking File>Save As PDF to the MS Publisher Imagesetter print driver which is a Windows printer installed on all Windows OS machines and it lives in the Start>Devices and Printers folder on each local machine.