Printing to Microsoft Print to PDF Produces 0-Byte PDF File
Environment
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Product | RadRichTextBox for WPF |
| Component | RadRichTextBox / DocumentPrintPresenter |
Description
When printing a document from RadRichTextBox using the standard PrintDialog and selecting Microsoft Print to PDF, the resulting .pdf file is 0 bytes and cannot be opened. No exception is thrown, and the PrintStarted and PrintCompleted events fire normally.
This issue typically reproduces when using fonts such as Calibri, whereas other fonts (like Times New Roman or Arial) may print as expected.
Cause
RadRichTextBox native printing uses the WPF visual print pipeline (PrintDialog.PrintDocument), which writes visual elements to the Windows print spooler via XPS. Certain virtual printer drivers—notably Microsoft Print to PDF—can fail to subset or embed specific TrueType/OpenType fonts (such as Calibri) during XPS-to-PDF conversion. When this failure occurs inside the printer driver, the spooler process terminates the PDF generation silently, creating an empty (0-byte) file without throwing a .NET exception.
Solution
To generate PDF documents reliably from a RadDocument, use the dedicated PdfFormatProvider instead of printing to a virtual printer driver. PdfFormatProvider serializes the document structure directly into PDF format without going through the Windows print spooler or printer drivers.
using System.IO;
using Telerik.Windows.Documents.FormatProviders.Pdf;
// ...
PdfFormatProvider provider = new PdfFormatProvider();
using (Stream output = File.OpenWrite("output.pdf"))
{
provider.Export(this.radRichTextBox.Document, output, null);
}If printing through a physical printer or PrintDialog is strictly required, change the font family of the document to a font that does not encounter driver-level embedding issues (e.g., Arial or Times New Roman).