Inkscape "Export Bitmap..." not working

Question

When I click "Export Bitmap..." in File menu or even from shortcut it brings no effect, no popup, no error.

I use Inkscape on Ubuntu 14.04.

EDIT: Regarding to your answers: yes, program restart does help, but this prevents you from work if you have over a dozen of images to export and you have to restart every time.

Solution 1

My best guess is that your dialog window disappeared outside the view of your screen. I had this occur both under Windows and Linux (especially when using dual monitors). Remove your personal settings and restart Inkscape. Under Ubuntu: just remove this folder: ~/.config/inkscape (the folder inkscape in the hidden folder .config in your home directory).

Just as a sidenote, sidebar dialogs can have 3 states: open and closed (the normal ones), but also: collapsed. When the export window is collapsed, you'll see "Export PNG Image (Shift+Ctrl+E)" in the right of your screen, vertically written. If the dialog is collapsed, it won't open by calling the menu. You then have to click on the item title.

Solution 2

I'm using 14.04, and I've had similar glitches, though not this particular one. Perhaps it has to do with Unity. If you only had one such image to export, I would try:

• Save your work
• Close Inkscape
• Reopen Inkscape
• Export Bitmap

But since you have over a dozen to export, may I recommend using the command line, as described below?.

Using the command line to export works around the GUI issues, and it is fairly straightforward (it just means you need to know what your parameters are and type them out.)

From: https://inkscape.org/en/doc/inkscape-man.html

EXAMPLES

While obviously Inkscape is primarily intended as a GUI application, it can be used for doing SVG processing on the command line as well.

Open an SVG file in the GUI:

inkscape filename.svg

Print an SVG file from the command line:

inkscape filename.svg -p '| lpr'

Export an SVG file into PNG with the default resolution of 90dpi (one SVG user unit translates to one bitmap pixel):

inkscape filename.svg --export-png=filename.png

Same, but force the PNG file to be 600x400 pixels:

inkscape filename.svg --export-png=filename.png -w600 -h400

Same, but export the drawing (bounding box of all objects), not the page:

inkscape filename.svg --export-png=filename.png --export-area-drawing

Export to PNG the object with id="text1555", using the output filename and the resolution that were used for that object last time when it was exported from the GUI:

inkscape filename.svg --export-id=text1555 --export-use-hints

Same, but use the default 90 dpi resolution, specify the filename, and snap the exported area outwards to the nearest whole SVG user unit values (to preserve pixel-alignment of objects and thus minimize aliasing):

inkscape filename.svg --export-id=text1555 --export-png=text.png --export-area-snap

Convert an Inkscape SVG document to plain SVG:

inkscape filename1.svg --export-plain-svg=filename2.svg

Convert an SVG document to EPS, converting all texts to paths:

inkscape filename.svg --export-eps=filename.eps --export-text-to-path

Query the width of the object with id="text1555":

inkscape filename.svg --query-width --query-id text1555

Duplicate the object with id="path1555", rotate the duplicate 90 degrees, save SVG, and quit:

inkscape filename.svg --select=path1555 --verb=EditDuplicate --verb=ObjectRotate90 --verb=FileSave --verb=FileClose

Comments

[Admin]

I have the same problem with Windows 7 64 bit and Java build 1.8.0_40-b26

[Jurgen G]

Jens, actually you'll see plain text in the sidebar, not those buttons.

[nicorellius]

Using the CLI worked for me, but I got an error that revealed some of the problem: Gtk-Message: 12:57:55.616: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"