For all of those who encountered a dreaded error 'read or write access denied' with Freehand printing or exporting to EPS/PDF under Windows 7 or Vista, there may be an easy fix.
Conditions:
- Freehand v.10 or MX (may affect other versions, not tested)
- Windows 7 (tested with 64-bit Win7 Home Premium, but probably affects other versions)
- Windows Vista (not tested, but other people report the same issue)
Symptoms:
- Export from Freehand to EPS or PDF fails with an error message Could not save the document because read of write access has been denied
- Printing to any Postscript printer – either online or print to file – or printing to Adobe PDF – fails with the same error as above, plus the Postscript interpreter error appears.
Solution:
- Open the Freehand Preferences dialog: Edit ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Export (tab)
Make sure the UserPrep file field is NOT EMPTY. Although you may probably write anything into this field (it works even with a dummy text - tested!), it's safe to create a blank text file and save it into your \Userprep folder (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\FreeHand\10\English\Settings\Userprep) with an extension .prp - i.e. fix.prp, and then input that filename into the required field in the FH dialog. - Exporting to EPS or PDF should now work without any errors related to this issue
- When you open the print dialog (assuming the selected printer is Postscript or Adobe PDF writer - or any other PDF writer, for that matter), you should see your userprep file listed in the job summary tree menu. Printing should also work without any errors related to this issue.
- The same method works with Freehand MX, obviously the location of \Userprep folder is different
Happy printing and exporting!
Hope this helps,
Igor