No option to scan to PDF

[DrGerm]

Hello,

SYSTEM:

Device: HP OfficeJet 6310 AIO (networked over a home LAN)

Solution Center Version: 74.000.017.000

OS: Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 [all current updates]

BACKGROUND/PROBLEM:

When I had first installed the printer (and it was working..) I had noticed a feature to Scan directly to a PDF. This is HUGE for me, and is about 25% of what I need this device for. However, after having had a problem with Solution Center stopping to recognize that I had an HP device - uninstalling/reinstalling multiple times - reformatting my entire computer/clean installing Vista (twice!) - many hours researching online - reinstalling/uninstalling/reinstalling again a couple times - I now can use Solution Center again (I don't know how, but it works now...) and can scan/print fine - EXCEPT that when scanning, I do not find an option to scan to PDF any more. There are just options for jpg, bmp, tif, png, pcx, and fpx.

I swear to God, I am about to throw this thing out a window and buy a new (non-HP) printer. I have NEVER spent so much time to get a stupid peripheral to work.. I am sorry, but I am just so angry and do not want to spend another minute researching online for problems with this thing so I am going straight to posting in a forum with this problem. And, if another re-installation is the next step, I will seriously scream and go "postal".

So, does anyone out there have a simple idea or two that I could try? There are some freeware apps to scan to PDF, but I would prefer to just use the one app (and honestly it works really well.. when it works...).

Thank you for any help.

[Joeley]

Wow, I thought I had HP-computer problems!

All I can suggest is when you install, make sure you are doing the Easy (Recommended) install that includles the OCR software. The OCR software is required to scan to PDF. I learned this the hard way when I tried to install without it to solve a problem (see below).

On the downside, I still have not found a way to have my C5280 AIO scan  to a low-resolution, non-searchable text PDF smaller than 500 KB. It should be 1/5 of that size or smaller, but instead it's scanning at the 300 ppi resolution and bulking up the size..

[DrGerm]

OH.... I bet that's it - I do recall unchecking that (but oddly, I remember the very first time I installed, that I had enabled OCR).

I feel less frustrated today, I'll give that a go and hope that I don't "re-break" my setup. Thank you for this tip.

BTW - I did check out an app, it's called "Scan2PDF" and can be found on snapfiles - it does the job, albeit the UI is less than flashy - but it's free and worked perfectly fine. I don't know if it scans to the format you desire though.

[learfxr]

I came here today cause I'm having a similar issue.  I have the Solution Center on my Toshiba laptop with Vista and I can scan doc's to pdf all the time.  Now I have a Dell laptop for work running XP pro since Vista blows, and now I have no option to scan to PDF.  What gives???

[learfxr]

Got mine fixed just now.  

Did an uninstall of the software and then loaded it using the Custom option.  Selected the IRIS OCR option and now I'm up and running.  

Hope this helps others.  It had me stumped since my other laptop worked fine and I know I never selected a custom install on that one.   

[Bob_Headrick]

The following link may help.

Regards,

Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

Edit by Katie_H (3/30/11): Fixing broken link

[mary123p]

I too have had the same problem and believe that the lack of OCR IRIS program must be installed.  However, my problem is that I cannot re-install the software. 

When I insert the Bundled CD it indicates that the OCR IRIS is already installed on my computer.  That is not the case as earlier I had previously removed it via Add/Remove programs and it is no longer on my computer.

I have installed and un-install the printer with the entire software bundle several times, cleaned the registry, contacted HP support, and also spent many hours with no results.  Is there an HP file on my computer with previous installation data that I can delete so it won't believe that the IRIS is still on my system?  Any help would be appreciated.

Mary

[Joeley]

I tried the scan2pdf utility suggested, but it did not work for me. Thanks, and welcome any other suggestion for scanning to PDF without the high overhead in size that seems to accompany HP Solution Center (defaults to 300 ppi searchable text, despite changing the settings from this). Using Adobe Acrobat Standard on the HP PDF product allowed me to reduce size by about 1/4 but still too large, and an extra step (and program).

[DexterM]

What version of Adobe Acrobat Reader are you guys using? is it version 8 or 9? i've noticed some compatibility issues with AAR v9. the PDF options are not available in the list of file types. But anything below version 8 has worked fine with our software. i suggest that if you have AAR v9, then uninstall our software and AAR also. then install AAR v8 first, and THEN install our software. it should work.

[warper]

After trying for week with any and all solutions that were posted I decided that my scanner stopped working just about when I upgraded to Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0.  I deleted 9.0 and reinstalled 8.1.3.  I reinstalled the HP 6310 software and presto it worked just like it used to.  Thanks for the lead because nowhere else does this problem suggest it came from Adobe Acrobat 9.0.