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Sonia Grondin
Sonia Grondin
Participant
July 7, 2014
Question

Combining 3 PDF's causes text on first page to be blocks

  • July 7, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 375 views

Have uploaded 3 PDF's and am trying to combine them to one PDF. They combine with no errors, but the first page shows blocks instead of text.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Sonia Grondin
    Sonia GrondinAuthor
    Participant
    July 7, 2014

    Wait... what? I changed from Arial to Times New Roman and it works. Acrobat.com can't understand Arial?

    I took the original XLS, select all. Changed font to something other than Arial, then back to Arial. Same result, blocks after combining.

    Then I did the same thing, but instead of using Arial for the test, I used TNR. Now it shows fine. Problem is I don't have the originals for all these PDF's. How can acrobat.com not understand Arial? It came out in 1982, I understand it's owned my Monotype, but come on. Adobe can afford some licensing to work with this.

    S
    Sara_Forsberg
    Inspiring
    July 7, 2014

    Hi Stacey,

    You shouldn't have trouble with Arial--do you know how the PDFs were created (did you print from Excel to PDF, or use the PDFMaker?), and whether the fonts were embedded? What do you see when you open that combined PDF in Reader or Acrobat and choose File > Properties > Fonts tab? Does the dialog box indicate that Arial is embedded or subsetted?

    Best,

    Sara

    Sonia Grondin
    Sonia GrondinAuthor
    Participant
    July 7, 2014

    I took the original XLS file, uploaded it to acrobat.com and it converted when using the combine method. The other 2 PDF's, were sent to us. I don't know how they were created, but we aren't having trouble with them.

    It's a fairly simple XLS file, just one page. Uploading it with Arial, shows blocks. Uploading the same file, but using Times New Roman, text converts fine.

    Taking the original XLS file and converting it to PDF is fine, it's Arial and it's readable. This was converted using acrobat.com. But the combination process fails using either the original XLS or the converted PDF.

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