Text not showing when exporting to PDF or printing in 6.4.4.2

[palimaar]

I’m running LO suite version 6.4.4.2 in Ubuntu 20.04

I’ve run into an issue where PDFs exported by LibreOffice do not contain any text characters (although images, table borders and other elements are fine). This is true for Write or Calc (have not tested in Impress or others, though). The same happens when I print them (characters either are completely missing or appear garbled).

I narrowed the error down to LibreOffice because if I take the same document produced by LibreOffice but export/print it via another program (e.g. Abiword, Gnumeric), the resulting PDF or printout presents no issues at all. So maybe it’s the exporting/rendering function inside LibreOffice that has a problem?

What could be causing this issue? I may not be running the latest edge version, but I believe it’s still under the support period. I googled around this problem and found maybe some issues related to font rendering in very old versions (3. something), but those fixes don’t seem to apply to this case.

For example, here is a sample document written in the default font and settings in Writer: http://untach.com/e820

And here is the PDF of that very document as exported by LO in my machine: http://untach.com/db50 (it doesn’t seem to have any text)

(these documents will expire in 3 days, I can reupload them elsewhere if needed)

I’ll gladly run tests or provide more information if needed, any feedback is appreciated.

Thank you!

[anon73440385]

Hello, tested your document sample.odt on Ubuntu 20.04 using LibreOffice 6.4.4.2 (from distribution repository) and could not reproduce your issue (PDF contains everything). Therefore I’d suggest to starte LibreOffice in Safe Mode (Help -> Restart in Safe Mode) and to check again. If that works, reset your user profile.

[palimaar]

Hi Opaque, Safe Mode does not change anything, the issue and reproduction remain exactly the same. Neither does resetting to factory settings or the user profile (I tried all short of purging the package and reinstalling from apt).

What else could affect the exporting to PDF?

[anon73440385]

I got no idea - the problem must be within your system, since I got no problem with the same configuration (with respect what I know about your system) and you stated that you performed the
action which is known to fix initial installation problems, i.e.

**Full uninstall:**

• dpkg --list | awk '/ii/&&/libreoffice/{print $2}' | sudo xargs apt --yes purge
• sudo apt --yes autoremove
• sudo rm -r /usr/lib/libreoffice/*

**Reinstall:**

• sudo apt update --yes
• sudo apt install libreoffice libreoffice-gtk3 libreoffice-help-en-us --yes

BTW: You are using qpdfview, which is a Qt-based application, while Ubuntu 20.04 is a GNOME GTK bases (by default) operating system. Are you sure you have installed any Qt libraries required for Qt applications to work (or are you in fact using Ubuntu in a Plasma/Qt/KDE environment?). Did you try to open your PDF using evince?

[palimaar]

Hi Opaque, thanks for the suggestions. I’ll try doing a full reinstall with the commands you listed (did not realize, for example, I’d have to purge /usr/lib by hand).

And yes, it seems that I forgot to add that I did do some modding to my stack but it was mostly cosmetics (change DE to awesome, install some non-GTK applications). However, neither evince, qpdfview, mupdf, or even opening it in the browser work. This in my opinion narrows down the issue again to libreoffice

[AndyLu]

I still have that problem on Lubuntu 20.04 LTS, even after having followed the steps in the accepted solution puring and reinstalling the libreoffice suit. I even deleted the ~./config-files of libreoffice. The issue is that when I open a .docx or .odt - document, click on “export to PDF”, all the text and many of the lines disappear, only inserted pictures are in the output PDF. What is this and how can I solve it?

[AndyLu]

Found an answer that worked for me: SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kf5 in LUBUNTU MENU: Preferences → LXQt settings → Session settings → Environment variables. Previously, it was set to qt5. The change to kf5 did it for me, finally.

[palimaar]

After following the suggestions from @anon73440385, I was able to solve this issue by doing a full reinstall + purging of the original LibreOffice installation in my machine.

Borrowing from Opaque’s answer:

Full uninstall (purge):

dpkg --list | awk '/ii/&&/libreoffice/{print $2}' | sudo xargs apt --yes purge
sudo apt --yes autoremove
sudo rm -r /usr/lib/libreoffice/* 

Note: this last step was not necessary in my machine (directory was removed automatically)

Reinstall:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libreoffice libreoffice-gtk3

After this full reinstall, PDFs were exported correctly with text appearing besides images and borders and all other elements in the page.

There was no need to update LO to the latest version/repo

[lazarus477]

An excellent post and very good feedback!
To anyone with a similar issue. Always consider the possibility that the problem might be with your PDF viewing software rather than with your PDF export. It can also be worth examining your PDF in Inkscape.

[kreiszner]

I had a similar problem when printing from LibreOffice writer. I would get gibberish. Then I tried to export to pdf as you did and as you did I got blank pg. I did the Full uninstall and reinstall and it solved the problem.

After the uninstall and update I installed an ungraded driver that had been recommended. Unfortunately, I don’t know what driver that was and whether that may have had anything to do with the problem. OS: lubuntu 20.04.

[GlenS]

Same situation and solution worked for me. Thanks all!

[AndyLu]

For me it didn’t work, I still have that problem on Lubuntu 20.04 LTS even after trying the solution.

[AndyLu]

Found a different answer that worked for me: SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kf5 in LUBUNTU MENU: Preferences → LXQt settings → Session settings → Environment variables. Previously, it was set to qt5. The change to kf5 did it for me, finally.