"Failed to create PDF" bug

Question

I've wasted more than enough time chasing down this inexcusable bug (by which I mean the failure to report a reason for the PDF export failure, not necessarily the export failure itself, for which there may be a reason I could do something about, if I was told what it was). I've upgraded to the latest product version and explored all the avenues described on this forum and have found no consistent answer. I'll have to export subsets of my material and stitch them together externally to make a single PDF file. Acrobat aside, what is the best affordable utility for doing this, ie one which will preserve the Indesign output options as regards printer's marks etc when assembling a PDF from multiple parts?

Answer 1

It took a along time to talk my bosses into purchasing the CS6 update and the "failed to create PDF" feature is costing us a lot of money in lost productivity. We place all rasters in PS and then all PS in an Illustrator file (for process consistency and so our callouts are all the same size).  For us, the issue is related to images in the document.  I usually open the page (or the page after) where the image occurred and open the Illustrator file, open the PS file, change the image mode to 8-bits rather than 16, then go back to Illustrator and update the CS5 legacy file to a CS6 Illustrator file. A real pain when you have 600 page documents containing an almost equal number of graphics.
My bosses want to switch to an XML based information system.  This is not where I'd like to see us go because creativity can be stunted in a purely XML/DTD environment.  But the costs associated with using Adobe are rising rapidly and these type of issues make the bean-counter's case for them.