Expert: Candice Anderson - 12/29/2006

Question
I'm a graphic design newbie, and where I work I'm frequently asked to create fliers and e-mail them to other sites, who print them on their local office printers.
I've received some complaints that the PDFs I export print with black lines across them, or black boxes behind images or text, or some parts of an mage print duplicated. People have shown me problem printouts, but my printer prints these PDFs perfectly.
I've been creating the PDFs by using export>high quality print.
How should I be creating PDFs in general? With what settings?
I would really appreciate your help.

Answer
are you using shadows? are you using transparencies? Are you bringing your photos in at hi-res, 300 dpi? Are you exporting to their version of acrobat?

Shadows and Transparencies - Indesign and pdfs don't work well with these yet.  If you have these, you must show them the actual indesign file - which means you also need to show them the package files as well becuase you can't just send the indesign file.

300 dpi - make sure your files are in this.  

Acrobat - not everyone upgrades when there's a new program.  Ask to see if this is the case.

You're exporting right, or so it sounds like you are.

Blk boxes - The reason's I've discuessed are the why they are showing up

Lines - eeeg, I think that that is the same reason.

Duplicates - That's their Acrobat.  They need to update files. I'm really not sure how to fix it otherwise (my boss has the same problem...)

Let me know if you need anything else ;)