I upgraded (whatever that means) to macOS Catalina.
If you visit https://apple.stackexchange.com using Safari and do a Print... and select Save as PDF, then you can create a pdf file. All is well so far. Now, using Preview, open the pdf file that you just created, and say you want to print pages 2-3 (or the entire document, it does not really matter) as a new pdf file. On my end, this is not working. I get an error message: Print. Error while printing.
Do you know of any resolutions, or should we just wait for the next update of macOS to solve this?
Best Answer
The essential difference between Safari's Export as PDF and Save As PDF in the print menu is that the latter involves the print architecture, and the former does not. As mentioned in the comments, it's possible that old 32-bit print drivers may be causing problems in Catalina's 64-bit clean environment. Of course, this would be noticed when printing to paper, too.
You can create a 'Generic Printer' print queue, and select that as your Printer whenever you Save As PDF in the print menu.
One other tip: for individual pages, you can drag the thumbnails out of Preview to the Finder.
It's also worth noting that Adobe's Acrobat app prohibits and prevents printing a PDF to a PDF, instructing the user to Export or Save As instead. I suspect most of the reasons for this prohibition relate to the loss of metadata -- bookmarks, annotations, Keywords, encryption, etc -- that will occur when a PDF is printed. Though there may be other reasons for doing so.