What is going on with Microsoft Print to PDF in Win 11 24H2

Just got a Patch Tuesday update to Build 26100.3194, tried a test Microsoft Print to PDF of this page, ended up with an 8MB file containing 27 pages. No issue.

Do you btw have any group policy's applied to the machine? for example Disallow USB Printing, as i read that can result in 0kb files. If you run onenote as admin, does it then save to pdf?

Print server permissions?

Microsoft Print to PDF Creates an Empty File​

Berton said:

Just got a Patch Tuesday update to Build 26100.3194, tried a test Microsoft Print to PDF of this page, ended up with an 8MB file containing 27 pages. No issue.

Click to expand...

WHOA WHOA WHOA!

Just completed my Windows Update to Build 26100.3194 as well - AND

Got a normal PDF of this page!!!

WTF? Seems there was something going on (OS wise) after all.

While I am a bit gutted that I do not know what was wrong - I will take it.

Much thanks again to everyone for all the help. I will consider this one - complete.

Cheers

S

Yeah, can confirm. A clean install of 24H2. Trying to print through "Microsoft Print to PDF" from Edge produces a file of size 0. Meanwhile, printing through the same "Microsoft Print to PDF" from Word or Acrobat Reader works perfectly fine.

P.S. Weird. After a few tries it started working in Edge as well.

Performed Log Out - Log In. After login, again, "Microsoft Print to PDF" doesn't work in Edge. Produces a file of size 0. Printed something from Word - worked fine. Returned to Edge - still produces files of size 0.

P.P.S. Oh, I see! When I revisited the output folder, my output files that used to be 0 suddenly acquired non-zero size and become perfectly readable. Apparently, something is still going on in the background after printing. The file sits at 0 for a while, but then its content appears in its full glory.

Basically, "Microsoft Print to PDF" seems to work fine. It is just that some applications perform printing in non-blocking manner, i.e. they delegate the task to some background process, which sometimes takes its sweet time to finish the job. As long as that process is plodding along, the file size stays at 0 (and the file is locked).