PDFCanvas Not Working with HeroLab64

Clean install of HeroLab 8.9 and PDFCanvas 1.8. Both installed successfully.

Running HeroLab64, unable to create PDFs of characters (File > Save PDF of Hero). Get an error indicating I will need to install the free PDF plug-in available.

Running HeroLab (32-bit version), successfully creates a PDF of the same character.

Suggestions?

FWIW, I'm seeing the exact same thing.

It sounds like the installer only added itself to the 32-bit copy. Just to make sure, when you say both installed successfully, you mean you installed the Pdf Plugin after installing the 64-bit version (or re-installed it, if you had it installed on your 32-bit copy)?

These are the steps I took:

1. Uninstalled the old version of HL.
2. Downloaded and installed HL 8.9 to C:\Program Files.
3. Confirmed that HeroLab.exe and HeroLab64.exe are licensed and working.
4. Downloaded and installed PDFCanvas 1.8 using HL update interface.
5. Closed HL and successfully installed PDFCanvas to C:\Program Files.
6. Opened HeroLab.exe and saving to PDF works.
7. Opened HeroLab64.exe and saving to PDF produces the error saying I need to install the PDF plug-in.

The only other thing I can think of is to ask whether you were within the 32 bit or 64 bit version when you downloaded the installer - maybe that matters. If not, I'll flag this to support when I'm back at work on Monday, and maybe they've seen this sort of thing before and know what to do.

Question - how do you know you installed the pdfcanvas to c:\Program Files? I just tested the process, and the installer for the pdf plug in never mentions a file location as it's running - it just runs without needing to ask questions beyond confirming that it's allowed to run. Also, why uninstall HL before updating?

I just reinstalled the PDFCanvas plug-in again, making sure I was in HL 64 when I downloaded the file. Same message when saving a PDF of the character.

When I do a clean installation of pdfcanvas, it asks to confirm the destination folder. It will not ask for the folder when I reinstall over ("on top of") when it's already installed.

Thank you for your assistance. Hopefully your support will have something.

In the future, I highly recommend against uninstalling HL between versions - I'm assuming that you already had the pdf plugin installed and working while using the beta of the 64 bit version, and on my own system, when I installed the final version of 8.9 to upgrade from the beta, the pdf generation just kept working, since I had already installed it.

Mathias said:

In the future, I highly recommend against uninstalling HL between versions - I'm assuming that you already had the pdf plugin installed and working while using the beta of the 64 bit version, and on my own system, when I installed the final version of 8.9 to upgrade from the beta, the pdf generation just kept working, since I had already installed it.

Click to expand...

I didn't uninstall HL.
The PDF plugin isn't working for me on the 64-bit.
I selected the PDF from the HL updates window, reinstalled it, and I still can't generate PDFs from HL.

Yeah, I didn't uninstall anything. I went to save a character to PDF and it told me I needed to install the PDCanvas. I downloaded and installed, then tried to save a PDF - still no joy.

Mathias said:

In the future, I highly recommend against uninstalling HL between versions - I'm assuming that you already had the pdf plugin installed and working while using the beta of the 64 bit version, and on my own system, when I installed the final version of 8.9 to upgrade from the beta, the pdf generation just kept working, since I had already installed it.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I'll remember that. It'll definitely make my life easier without having reset my default configuration and download/install the community updates.

It appears to me that HL64 is its own application installed along side HL32, though it uses the same data files. I'm not sure whether it would have made a difference whether I had installed as an update.

Krothos said:

It appears to me that HL64 is its own application installed along side HL32, though it uses the same data files.

Click to expand...

There may be some people still running HL on rather old computers, that may not be updated with everything that's needed for a 64-bit program, so we left the option for 32 bit in place, but if you can run the 64, that's what we recommend using, and on Macs, 32-bit will no longer be supported by Apple pretty soon, so those don't offer the 32-bit version any more.

Any update on this from your support team? I saw there was some transition at LW so understandable if there's been no movement on this yet. Just checking...

Any news? Can't use the 64-bit version of HL until this is resolved. I rely heavily on the PDF option for my gaming. Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I want to encourage all users who are affected by this to reach out to us via our support email address <support@wolflair.com> and send in whatever system documentation you can collect such as your Hardware configuration/specs and your Operating System Version info.

We have seen a couple of reports of this behavior but thus far the issue seems to only impact a small portion of Users. Irrespective of this, we want to gather as much documentation as possible on the problem so that we can arm the dev team with as much context and concrete info as possible in hopes to find and correct the root issue.

I look forward to talking to you all soon, and I want to also note that while we do not have a solution in place yet I am going to update this thread with more information as it becomes available.


EDIT: I've been in touch with the team here and while we are still looking into why this is occurring, we believe we have found the problem, namely the various PDFCanvas64 files (.dll and .lib) files were not properly written to the Hero Lab Folder in the Program Files folder.

If you are being affected by this, we have found a workaround to help fix your issue that involves extracting some files directly into that directory so PLEASE reach out to us through our support so we can help resolve the issue with you directly.

Thanks again!

Done, and thank you.

FWIW, the fix worked for me.

From my understanding of the issue the update installer places the required files (the PDFcanvas and PDFlib dll files) into the folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\Hero Lab" regardless of where the user has installed Herolab on their PC. This issue only seems to exist for the 64bit version afaik, I am unsure if it also does the same for other updates as I have only attempted to install the PDF viewer update file since upgrading.

Basically to fix the issue you only need to go to the location "C:\Program Files (x86)\Hero Lab", it should likely only contain the PDFcanvas64 and PDFlib64 files inside it, move those files to the location you have installed Herolab on your PC. No need to uninstall or reinstall anything. Sadly this correction can only be done manually as the update installer doesn't give the option to choose the install location (normally not an issue as the 32bit version just installed where Herolab was installed anyway).

Hopefully this helps.

Will the fix be posted or are we to still contact Support?

Try coping the four files from your PDFcanvas directory to your herolab directory that have a name starting with "pdf" (pdfcanvas64.dll/lib, pdflib64.dll/lib).

Farling You are a GOD amongst Mortals! I moved those two files from my C drive to my D drive and I am back in the happy place! My High School students that have just started learning D&D will be very happy to see their new characters!
Thank you