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_Alan_R_Thompson_
Participant
September 12, 2008
Question

When printing PDF, text comes out as strange random characters?

  • September 12, 2008
  • 28 replies
  • 134025 views
Hi,
We have been having this with more and more of our users recently, but it's random and follows no particular pattern...

Sometimes, when printing a PDF to our networked HP laser printers, the PDF template comes out fine (eg any images/logos, the form template, any objects etc) but the text comes out as random ASCII characters?
It happens regularly, but you can print the same file out again and it will often work fine?

I guess its more likely a problem with the printers, but HP forums haven't helped me out. I've tried PCL5, 5e, and 6 drivers, they all do it occasionally.

I guess Im hoping the Adobe forum has seen this before, Any ideas?
Alan
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28 replies

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_Alan_R_Thompson_Author
Participant
September 25, 2008
So it happens with a Brother printer too? Rules out HP drivers and/or print servers :(
I'm using more than 1 printer, HP 4000 and 1200...

Same problem as you guys though, forms and graphics print fine, but the text within them sometimes turns into wingding/hyrogliphics!

Alan
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_Gabriele_Wießler_
Participant
September 25, 2008
Hi,

I've just the same problem with a brother 2070N laserprinter. Some characters are printed well, but even those parts in the documents, that have fields with variable contend in the printed form - might by another textstyle - are printed as hieroglyphes.
Everything is all right except printing pdf-files. Problem occurs first after installing new adobe 7.
Printer updates had no result, 4 hours of search later I've no idea what to do now.
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_Dallas_Stroud_
Participant
September 24, 2008
Alan

Just curious, what printer are you using?
Im having somewhat of the same problem when I print a PDF I sometimes get Pages and Pages of one line of "windings symbols" at the top of the page. Im using a HP CP 1518ni laser jet. I called HP and they had me update my firmware but that didnt seem to help and since it is kind of random they could'nt do much for me at the time. I just posted on HP forum about this issue heres the link incase i get some kind of helpfull info

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1272168

Im also using Reader 8
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_Alan_R_Thompson_Author
Participant
September 24, 2008
We have PDF995 but how will help?
We have issues printing PDFs to laser printers... Why would we want to print it to a PDF printer :)
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_peterjowett_
Participant
September 24, 2008
if you can't get adobe to work for you i suggest downloading a copy of pdf995 (it's free.

it acts as a virtual printer and will turn pretty much any document into a pdf

not a perfect solution i know, but a solution nonetheless :)
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_Alan_R_Thompson_Author
Participant
September 19, 2008
Why is it my problems are always as yet unsolved :(
Anyone got HP support contract of some sort, so they can explore the possibilities of it being printer/print server related?
Not sure if this problem occurs on locally attached printers, but its certainly not specific to one HP model or driver!
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_dbz0927_
Participant
September 19, 2008
Can someone from Adobe answer this issue? I'm really desperate here!! Jonathan is right, but imagine printing 400 pages aaaaaaaaaah!!
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_Jonathan_Lynam_
Participant
September 15, 2008
I have the same problem. Of course "print as image" works fine. And everything displays perfectly well on the monitor running acrobat. When printing, however, I get lots of wingdings looking symbols instead of expected text. I've tried toggling the "use local fonts" checkbox.
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