So I haven’t used Dorico in awhile. I’m on 3.5 so probably used it in 2020 maybe, possibly 2021. Anyhow, I’m still on the same computer, same OS Win 10. This PC was all singing and dancing two years ago so there’s nothing wrong with the computer. So I’m on a deadline and input my simple vocal and piano composition. About seven pages, I go to print (I wan a PDF). I notice my printer is listed in the tab, but it isn’t turned on and I’ve probably changed internet provider and router in between (I think). So Dorico crashes. I try again. It crashes again. I look on the forum and find a posting from DS from 2018 saying that Dorico sometimes crashes when it can’t find a printer WTF! This is 2023! So I look in System / Preferences for printer settings so I can disable the printer as I only want a PDF. I can’t find the setting. I look in the online manual. I still can’t find how you disable a prineter or remove it from the TAB in print. So I figure I’ll uninstall the program and reinstall it, that way it won’t have a reference to the printer. I fumble about in ‘My Steinberg’. It wants me to switch on ‘2-step verification’.WTF! I try and scan the code…no that doesn’t work. I end up on My Products but can’t find the 3.5 download to reinstall Dorico. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THAT HARD JUST TO PRINT A effing PDF.
I’m done with this program…I’ve probably spent over a £1000 on this program with updates and I can’t even print a PDF from my composition.
It’salways the same with this program. You leave it for six months and something needs resetting or sorting out. I can switch Presonus Studio One on anytime and if it needs updating it does it automatically and is sorted in a few minutes.
As it is, this is going to take me hours to sort out, like it always does. I find it hard to believe that I’m the only one who feels like this.
So I reinstalled the program (not the additional bits) and gues what? The printer is still in the PRINT tab…it must have some kind of cache or memory of it. Why? I made sure the printer was off before I opened the program. Like I said, all I want to do is print a PDF. Ridiculous.
It is not Dorico that remembers the printer, it knows it because there is a driver installed and configured. Windows reports the printer as available.
Whatever it is, it’s pants. So if I uninstall the driver from the printer, then reinstall Dorico, it should have no memory of it…let’s see if that works. Thanks.
Why don’t you do a Graphic export and leave that printer issue alone, since you want a PDF (and it’s been proven that Graphic Export PDF is the best route)?
I’m sorry to hear you’re having this problem, Alan. I’d be really interested to see the crash logs produced when Dorico is crashing: if you could please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and either upload the file here (if the zip file is smaller than 4MB) or email it to me at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de, I can take a look and see what’s going on.
In the meantime, you don’t need to go to Print mode to export a PDF, so you can avoid Dorico trying to talk to your printer. Go to the Key Commands page of Preferences, and type “PDF” into the search box in the middle at the top:
I suggest you select the Export Current Layout as PDF command, and assign a custom shortcut to it. Then make sure you’re looking at the layout that you want to export as a PDF, and invoke your custom shortcut. A PDF will be exported, by default alongside the Dorico project file wherever it is saved on your computer.
Oh, and don’t uninstall and reinstall Dorico again after removing your printer in Windows, if you choose to do that: it won’t make any difference. Simply running Dorico again after you’ve removed the printer will be sufficient.
But following the method I’ve posted above, you shouldn’t need to do anything with your printer in the first place.
Many thanks Daniel for the reply. Your support over the years has been tremendous, but it still begs the question why is something so simple failing? As it is, I couldn’t get the shortcut to work (I’m on a cut-down keyboard and maybe picked an unsopported key…I have set shortcuts for the rhythm durations so I’m not sure why it didn’t work). As it is, after removing the Brother wi-fi / network printer and then reinstalling Dorico, the prnter was removed from the PRINT tab and I could export a PDF from there. I haven’t time at the moment to see if everything else is ok but it seems to be now. Thanks.
I’d be interested to see your diagnostics, as I said in my first reply: do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and either attach the resulting zip file here, or send it to me via email at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de.
Hi Daniel,
I’ve just used a system restore to get things back to how it was before I uninstalled things. I’ve just verified that the Printer, a Brother MFC-J69300DW is showing up in the Print tab and that Dorico crashes when I enter the Print tab.
Thanks
Al
(Attachment Dorico Diagnostics.zip is missing)
I’m not sure why the attachment didn’t work. I’ll send it to your email Daniel.
Exporting as a graphic file works, of course. I simply select Microsoft print to PDF (and not my HP printer) from Dorico’s Print window. Works just fine.
Yes, of course you can walk this path. This way you leave Dorico’s ground and walk onto Microsoft territory. Exactly this procedure led to the problem our thread starter altruistica ran into.
Instead, letting Dorico itself do the graphical export to PDF would not have risen the issue.
My only point was that using Microsoft print to PDF is still done from within Dorico’s print window, and produces a fine PDF without crashing Dorico. He did state he wanted a PDF, after all.
Yes, but you should not use Print-to-PDF. The proper method is to use Graphic Export to PDF.
Just to be clear, when I entered ‘Print’ (the large tab that contains Setup, Write, Engrave, Play, Print), Dorico would crash when selecting Print.
As DS has said, it was looking for a printer that it couldn’t find. Once I deleted the printer from the ‘Printers’ section in Windows, rebooted the computer, then Dorico had no info on that printer and I could enter the Print section without it crashing and from there ‘print’ a pdf graphic. I have never come across this before with Dorico, but what frustrated me is that after leaving use of the program for a period of time, there always seems to be something that needs fixing. I was up against a deadline and this was the last thing I needed (I know, 1st world problems…)
It never occurred to me that I could do this. I haven’t used Dorico for at least eighteen months and was using the method I had always used in the past.
As frustrating as this was (and it was, to be sure! especially when dealing with a deadline) a few thoughts come to mind.
- the first—and main thing—is that it’s a bit surprising that you didn’t keep an archive of any important files in any alternate format. It’s always a good idea (at a bare minimum!) to generate PDFs of your projects once you are done so you have a universal and fixed format ready to go. Honestly, even exporting an XML file is a good idea if you know that you won’t be revisiting the file for for over a year and a half. When I migrated from Sibelius, I archived every project I had as a pdf and exported it as XML, knowing full well that in the future my Sibelius file format might be defunct, OR (and this was the more likely scenario) I wouldn’t even have access to working software anymore. The latter has certainly come to pass, but I still have access to two forms of all of that data. The former allows me to print and share my old files visually at a moment’s notice, and the latter allows me to rework that data in Dorico (which I can check for errors against the old PDFs).
- I’m a bit surprised you never migrated the file to your new program of choice if it was this important or related to a paying/public gig. (You have your reasons, no doubt.)
- who knows what changes or minor updates may have happened to your computer in 18 months that could have been the culprit here, resulting in a bug that didn’t exist when this version of the program was still current. This isn’t really dorico’s fault. And whatever caused this glitch has likely been rectified:
- there have been multiple new versions of the software released in the last 18 months, all of which have resulted in not only hundreds of new features, but hundreds of bug fixes. The dev team never sits still. One always runs a risk whenever one chooses to use out-dated software, that something might be amiss long after the software has stopped being updated. This is true of every software and no particular fault of dorico’s. There is one software that I use that is pretty expensive and I’ve paid to upgrade it before just for the bug fixes, even though I didn’t need or benefit from a single new feature in the newest version. I upgraded for the stability. Hate to say it, but such is life with computers, alas.
I actually didn’t know either that it was possible to do a graphic export without accessing Print mode, it’s Daniel Spreadbury who described this procedure thanks to you! I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful and thank you for provoking this explanation!
Thanks, Dan. I’ll try that next time. It never occurred to me to do so, as the pdfs produced from Dorico’s print menu using ‘print to pdf’ are good.