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Limitations, caveats, bugs
Here are the known limitations and bugs that affect Prep4PDF. We can't claim that this is a complete list; there may be limitations that we're not aware of yet. We urge you to try out the fully functional free demo version of Prep4PDF before you purchase it. Other than the demo stamp it puts on each PDF page, it's identical to the "real thing". You can test it with your own PowerPoint files to make sure that it supports the features that are important to you.
Links in PPT 2007 don't appear as links in the PDF
Prep4PDF uses small, invisible EPS graphics to send link and other instructions to the Adobe PDF driver or other PDF-making software. PowerPoint 2007 handles EPS graphics differently from earlier versions; basically, it throws away the PostScript portion of the graphic. This is totally non-standard, and also is what causes links to be ignored in the PDF.
Microsoft has released a hotfix for Office 2007 that solves this problem
If you use PowerPoint 2007 (original release, SP1 or SP2) you'll need to apply this hotfix before Prep4PDF will be able to do its job.
User sees a warning when activating a link to external files
This is a feature of Acrobat - it allows the user to decide whether to activate potentially harmful links or not. There's no way to get around this using settings within a PDF file.
Animations not supported
Prep4PDF can't translate PowerPoint animations in any meaningful way because PDF doesn't support animation in any but the most recent version (Acrobat 7) and Adobe has not released public documentation on how to accomplish this.
WebPath overrules link to PDF conversions
In Preferences, you can elect to have Prep4PDF treat PPT and other document links as though they were links to PDFs (on the assumption that the external documents will also be converted to PDF). You can control the document types that Prep4PDF converts this way, but it doesn't convert what sees as web links (links that point to a location on the web rather than to local files)
If you set a WebPath, Prep4PDF adds the requested web path and therefore sees all documents as web links. Because of this, it no longer converts e.g. PPT links to PDF links.
Links from wrong master appears on converted slides
If you have a PPT file that includes multiple masters (ie, one that was created in PowerPoint 2002 or later), it may not convert to PDF satisfactorily in PowerPoint 2000 or earlier. Since these versions don't fully understand multiple masters, you may find elements from several masters on converted slides.
To take full advantage of multiple masters, you'll need to do the PDF conversion in a version of PowerPoint that supports multiple masters.
Please note:
Prep4PDF makes PowerPoint perform tasks automatically. Because of this, Prep4PDF may be affected by bugs in PowerPoint. An add-in can't correct flaws in PowerPoint itself, though wherever possible we try to include workarounds for known problems.
Sometimes we just have to live with problems until Microsoft fixes them.
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