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cholden424
cholden424
Participant
July 17, 2018
Answered

Text appearing as box-shaped symbols upon opening PDF derived from Revit in Illustrator

  • July 17, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 6615 views

All PDFs that I extract from Revit and open in Illustrator show text as box symbols that are not editable. Text shows in this way even though I have the fonts that are in the file. I have tried re-importing/downloading each font but I haven't had luck.

    Correct answer Danny Whitehead.

    With the exception of PDFs saved from Illustrator with 'Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' selected, Illustrator isn't a PDF editor. It will open PDFs created by other applications, with varying degrees of accuracy and editability, but it's entirely dependent on how the other application built the PDF. There may be some tricks in Revit to produce an Illustrator-freindly PDF, but that would be a question for Revit users.

    2 replies

    D
    Darrin Hunter
    Participating Frequently
    July 11, 2024

    Often, you can fix the "tofu" box characters you are seeing in Acrobat or Illustrator after opening PDFs created in 3rd party software by RESAVING them as PDF-A or PDF-X archival formats. Then, reopen them in your end point software (Illustrator, etc) and the fonts will be corrected (and often even editable text instead of outlines!)

    I'm not sure why saving to these formats would correct this issue, but my guess is that it has something to do with font encoding protocols that get changed to meet those different archival PDF standards..... something very font geeky and technical like that.

    You can also change the output profiles you use when exporting from Revit or other similar programs to export directly to an archival PDF standard like PDF-A or PDF-X, and you will likely sidestep the intermediate save, resulting in a PDF that works in Illustrator right out of the gate... Hope this helps! 

    N
    Noel34193710qcvh
    Participant
    January 11, 2025

    WOW. For years, I've encountered "tofu" box characters when editing PDFs submitted by clients and tried many fixes, but none have worked.

    Your fix did the trick. A quick export in PDF-A saved me what might have been hours of work in reproducing text on a complex diagram. Thank you for sharing.

    Danny Whitehead.
    Danny Whitehead.Correct answer
    Legend
    July 17, 2018

    With the exception of PDFs saved from Illustrator with 'Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' selected, Illustrator isn't a PDF editor. It will open PDFs created by other applications, with varying degrees of accuracy and editability, but it's entirely dependent on how the other application built the PDF. There may be some tricks in Revit to produce an Illustrator-freindly PDF, but that would be a question for Revit users.

    D
    Darrin Hunter
    Participating Frequently
    July 11, 2024

    .....one small disagreement here: When we say "Illustrator isn't a PDF editor," that's not entirely accurate.

    Illustrator is, in fact, the Mothership of PDF!
    Many people do not know that underneath the hood, the ".ai" native file format that Illustrator uses is written in PURE PDF (old "postscript") code....

    You can prove this to yourself by opening ACROBAT and then browsing to any ".ai" Illustrator file you wish and clicking Open. Voila, the native Illustrator file will open in Acrobat just fine, as if it were any other PDF.... 

    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 11, 2024

    The .ai file will only open in Acrobat when it is saved with PDF compatibility.

    Otherwise you get this:

     

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