MadCap Software Forums

I'm trying to insert an image of a PDF page using Flare 12.

In my topic, I select Insert > Image, then select a PDF file.

Nothing shows up in the Preview window.
And when I click OK, I get a "Load Failed" error.
I've tried this on multiple PDFs with the same result. Is there a special way to set up a PDF so it works?

Well it's supposed to work.
http://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare12/ ... esAsImages
Did you select the page of the PDF to show as indicated in that help?

Yes, I selected the PDF page I want, but it doesn't show up in the Preview window.

It is documented well in the Flare documentation. That's why I was wondering if I need to do something special to the PDF document to get pages to display.

My co-worker tried it on their copy of Flare 12 to see if I had something wrong with my setup and got the same results.

Submit a bug to MadCap about this.

I submitted this as a bug and got the following reply from Flare support:

"Thank you for contacting Madcap Software Technical Support.

If you want to insert an image of a pdf page you have to take a screenshot of the pdf page and then insert it. It is failing because it does not recognize .pdf as an image format."

When I replied that .pdf is a documented image format, I got the following reply:

"I think it may be a feature on 2017 R2 that was released earlier this week."

And you should point them to the page of help from Flare 12 that I linked above.

Just to have closure for this post, it turns out that I needed to have Ghostscript installed. Now, I'm able to insert a PDF page as an image.

craigorem10 wrote:Just to have closure for this post, it turns out that I needed to have Ghostscript installed. Now, I'm able to insert a PDF page as an image.

So why didn't you get this information from Tech Support? You would think that's something they'd know and could pass on...

It was tech support that found the issue. The person I was communicating with realized their mistake (about it being a new feature in 2017v2) and set up a time to get on my computer and investigate.

After the issue was fixed, I sent an email back suggesting they put a note in the documentation mentioning Ghostscript.

Chiming in to say that this indeed works once you download Ghostscript. I have no clue what third-party app it is or why it's needed but I was getting the "load failed" grey box, downloaded Ghostscript thanks to this thread, and it's working just fine now.