Well, the Mac spreadsheet problem is sorted – but it turns out that I was on the wrong track when I first tried to fix it. When opening the spreadsheet to try and print invoices, we had noticed that sometimes, though not always, it complained about broken links. When I brought the client’s version of the sheet home, this turned out to be the case on my machine too. I tracked these down on my machine and found that a couple of (unused) range names were pointing to non-existent locations. Borrowing my client’s Mac so as to be able to work on the problem at my leisure, I fixed these – and lo and behold, the problem went away!
I find it difficult to see what the problem could have been exactly, but presumably it affected the internal structure of the PDF somehow and thus prevented its successful export. Anyway, it’s not best practice to have old, unused range names or references in a workbook – especially if they are no longer valid – so it was a good opportunity to carry out some essential housekeeping.
