ActiveX Component Can Not Create Object

Question

Obviously, this error is not rare and not limited to Adobe. What is troubling about this one for me is that it happens so inconsistently. I'm programming in VS2005/VB.net. The application receives incoming faxes in TIF format and converts them to PDFs.
The files get routed through our company and at two points the PDF files get watermarks added. There is a single procedure that applies both watermarks. The error is never generated on the first call and happens less than 25% of the times on the second call. It happens on some computers more than others. I trap for the error and I'm able to deal with it, but it would be better if I could stop it from happening. All of our users have Acrobat Standard version 8.1.0
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Greg

Answer 1

Well, it is hard to say exactly where it is happening because it has never happened on my development machine. I have the Apply Watermark() procedure trapped in a Try...Catch block and that is what throws the exception. Below is the procedure. The parameters passed in are a the file name, the text of the watermark, and either a 1 or a 0, depending on whether it is the first or second watermark. Above this procedure, the only thing that happens to the document prior to the Apply Watermark call is that the PDF document is moved from a temporary holding folder on the server to a permanent folder on the same server. The file is moved and then the watermark is applied.
    Public Sub ApplyWaterMark(ByVal sPDFFileIn As String, ByVal sWatermarkStr As String, ByVal iIndex As Integer)
        ' global variables
        Dim jsObj As Object
        ' Create a PDDoc IAC object.
        Dim pdDoc As Acrobat.CAcroPDDoc
        pdDoc = CreateObject("AcroExch.PDDoc")
        If pdDoc Is Nothing Then
            MsgBox("Failed to create Acrobat PDDoc object.")
            Exit Sub
        End If
        Rename(sPDFFileIn, sPDFFileIn & "temp")
        ' Open the source PDF document
        Dim rc As Integer
        rc = pdDoc.Open(sPDFFileIn & "temp")
        If rc <> -1 Then
            MsgBox("Failed to open PDF document " & sPDFFileIn, MsgBoxStyle.Critical)
            Exit Sub
        End If
        ' Acquire the Acrobat JavaScript Object interface from the PDDoc object
        jsObj = pdDoc.GetJSObject
        ' make a color object
        Dim oColor As Object
        oColor = jsObj.color.black()
        ' Add a text watermark.
        ' function prototype:
        jsObj.addWatermarkFromText(sWatermarkStr, 2, "Helvetica", 10, oColor, 0, 0, True, True, True, 0, 2, 1, 200 + iIndex * 30, False, 1.0, False, 0, 1)
        ' save the PDF with watermarks to a new document.
        rc = pdDoc.Save(1, sPDFFileIn)  ' full save
        ' close original PDF.
        pdDoc.Close()
        pdDoc = Nothing
        jsObj = Nothing
        ' to clean up, get the Acrobat application, 
        ' close Acrobat if there are no open documents.
        Dim gApp As Acrobat.CAcroApp
        gApp = CreateObject("AcroExch.App")
        If gApp.GetNumAVDocs = 0 Then
            gApp.CloseAllDocs()
            gApp.Exit()
        End If
        ' show message. You can comment it out if you really need a quiet operation.
        If rc <> True Then
            MsgBox("The watermark failed to apply. This document was not time stamped.", MsgBoxStyle.Critical)
        Else
            Kill(sPDFFileIn & "temp")
        End If
    End Sub