Compressed document unreadable and adobe cannot combine documents

Question

I have been a premium and pro (and whatever else adobe tries to sell me and double charge me for) for probably 2 decades. i am stupidly locked in. I absolutely need a usable pdf editor/toolbox, etc for my profession. it is critical. I just attempted to compress a pdf using the compress tool... it was not THAT large... 300 pages which started at 35MB. i asked for medium compression. it took some time to compress and then it was available on adobe cloud. It compressed to around 12MB. It is literally unreadable. The majority of the documents come back with the font replaced into some sort of gibberish. I did the same task online with I LOVE PDF! and it was completed in second, compressed to 8MB and the pages are clear and readable. This is truly unacceptable that I pay the amount I do to access premium (and for years paid for BOTH premium and Pro despite trying to understand why i needed to... but of course there was ONE too, in the next upgraded plan that was not in the plan i had. I thought I upgraded but adobe continued to charge me for both FOR YEARS. I called several times and thought it had been resolved but apparently never was. So, I digress.The issue today regarding the compression issue is just nonsensical. why does a free program do the task perfectly in minutes when the very expensive supposed PDF expert program cannot do this simple task. not only that, when i initially tried to combine the documents to create the document, adobe would not combine - kept saying that the documents were "certified" (they are not), whereas I LOVE PDF combine the documents in seconds without any problem. Someone PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY this is the case....?????

creative explorer · Answer

@MindfulMountain First of all, why are you buying Adobe Premium (specifically a mobile-app subscription (via Apple App Store or Google Play) when you have Acrobat Pro (which allows you to have the ability to do on a mobile, tablet and desktop) already? Are you using two different Adobe accounts? And if so, just use the one then. I have two different Adobe accounts (used to be three) but I have two different accounts because of two different workplaces. Consolidate it, and cancel the Adobe Premium and just use Adobe Pro.

To cancel, you must cancel through the app store where you subscribed—it will depend on the mobile device, Google Play for Android, Apple App Store for iPhones/iPads (just don't delete the app, make sure you cancel it properly)

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Chances are iLovePDF flattens the PDF's layers and creates a fresh version of the document that usually bypasses "certified" errors and font glitches.

What I somtimes do to make the PDF instead of Compressing the PDF, I use 'Print to PDF', which kinda mimics what iLovePDF does, but also strips out any metadata or unneccessary data (if I am at work, I do use the Preflight Flattener)—try that instead of Compressing the file which will make the file smaller but at certain costs too (pixalation or unreadable text?)

Also, instead of scanning for a PDF, don't scan at 300dpi, that would also eat up alot of space, shoot for something like 150-200, unless, you really need this for print, then 300dpi is the norm for that.

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