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Gerrit_Viehmann's avatar
Gerrit_Viehmann
Brass Contributor
Jul 08, 2024

MS Access Report with tab characters in content cannot be exported as PDF/A file

PDF files are created without problems if the PDF/A-compatible option is not activated. The problem is reproducible with VBA code (Error 2501) and manually with export as PDF or XPS from the menu (see below).
 
If I remove all tab stops from the text content of the report pages, I can save the PDF file even if the PDF/A-compatible option is set (e.g. via HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\FixedFormat\LastISO19005-1 = 1 or AD Office 365 Group Policy).
 
I made a small Access DB with the string "ABC DEF" (whitespace is a tab) in Table1, which is displayed in Report1.

Export via "PDF or XPS" with PDF/A-compliant option set

In my environments Win 11, Win 10, and Win 2022 Datacenter with Locale de-DE it reproduces this bug in 32-bit and 64-Bit Versions of Access 365 MSO Version 2406.

After print dialog finishes normaly, but before file is created, this error message shows.

I've reported this problem to the german Microsoft Support (TrackingID#2407051410001308), but they couldn't reproduce it. They recomeded to report instead to the Windows Feedback-Hub, but this software seem to send my reports to /dev/null. I can post, but the posts never show up.

Any ideas?

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