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Probably because you are using SAS 8.1. The ODS PRINTER PDF code is highly experimental in SAS 8.1 but is much improved in SAS 8.2. Basically, in SAS 8.1, it works if and only if

• you use 7-bit ASCII exclusively.
• you use LETTER paper exclusively.
• you use PORTRAIT orientation exclusively.
• you use Adobe Acrobat Reader v3 exclusively. (Later versions of v4 might work, but early v4 versions don't.)
• you view the output on the screen exclusively (you don't try to print).

There are still some problems with the SAS 8.2 ODS PRINTER PDF, primarily concerning links. The following are problematic:

• internal URLs; for example, url="#dest5". These are just plain broken in SAS 8.2 ODS PDF and ODS PRINTER PDF. The workaround is to use the PDFMARK command instead.
• URLs of the form url="http://whatever" do not produce PDF that is, strictly speaking, correct. If you use Adobe Acrobat Reader under Windows, you won't notice--everything will work (which is how the bug managed to slip by us); however, Adobe Acrobat (the paid product) and the UNIX acroread command are not so forgiving. The workaround is to specify the URL as url="http:http://whatever" instead. We fixed this bug in the SAS 9.0, but we fixed it in such a way that the preceding workaround will continue to function, so it's safe to go ahead and code it. Unfortunately, it won't work for HTML or other destinations in SAS 8.2 or SAS 9, so you may have to use separate code for the different destinations if this is an issue for you.
• over-large images. If there are too many large images on a single page, ODS PDF will abend. This should be fixed in SAS 9.0. It only happens with images that are probably already "too big to be useful" so this isn't nearly as much of a problem as it might sound.
• "bad PDF" messages. If you are running SAS 8.2 under Windows on a slow machine, you might see a message saying "bad PDF" when you read PDF produced by ODS PDF or ODS PRINTER PDF. (If you have a fast machine, the message still pops up but it's so fast that you don't really see it.) These messages are harmless; there's a slight technical violation of the PDF standard (fixed in SAS 9.0), but it should not interfere with the presentation of the PDF output.
• We received a report of a rather odd situation: Although a file produced by ODS PDF was readable, the user allowed Adobe to repair it. Then when the user sent the repaired file to a friend with a Macintosh, the friend could not read it. Forewarned is forearmed, one hopes.

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