Acrobat 8 adds extra characters to the running header

Thanks Mkashif - sounds good!
Now I would like to hear it from an Adobe official... :o)

I've Acrobat 8.0 and 9.0 both and it seems that its fixed. I had a few files where this problem was there but they work fine in 9.0.

Is the extra characters in the header problem fixed in 9.0?

You can keep the bookmarks in a pdf but you need to uncheck "Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF". See if this clears it up.

You can add the tags to your resulting pdf after the fact in acrobat. They are important to allow pdfs to be read by screen readers.

I posted a question to Microsoft regarding this issue before looking here.

I've found is easier to use the text touch upp tool to fix the headers.

I have this same problem, but it's even worse. Not only is garbage added to headers, but also to text around hyperlinks which SOMETIMES causes the links in the converted PDF to be non-functional.

I have noticed that the converter adds characters in a ZWAdobeF font, size 1, which contain the garbage complained about here. For hyperlinks, the link is preceded and followed by a H. Another symptom is that the link works, but the URL is truncated!

I am astonished that this problem remains after two years of complaints!

I'd use the Microsoft publisher except that I also need to add security options to the converted files, and I do this a LOT. Perhaps there's some automated way to do this? I'm new to this aspect of Acrobat.

Steve

aravind,
Regarding your Word doc. changing, that is very strange indeed. I'd suggest you update/save the file before PDF-ing, then close the file without saving changes if the headers change after PDF-ing. The file will be saved at the pre-PDF-ing state.

DeNelo,
Agreed. OK, let's say this is a really difficult prob. to solve. Why doesn't Adobe at least acknowledge it in the Knowledgebase? I can't find anything in that source about it, which implies denial (or they lack the guts to admit a really sticky prob.)

Anyone,
Just remember that there are two workarounds:
First, you can make two PDFs - one that has bookmarks, links, etc. as needed (but with bad headers), and a second one that is printed (no bookmarks or links). In the file with the bookmarks/links, replace all pages with those of the second file. Result: All functionality in place + good headers.

Second, if you have Word 2007, you can use the free Microsoft PDF Publisher. It creates file without this problem (with bookmarks, links, etc.) Plus it is lightening fast.

--GMc

Wow. This thread started in 2006. And still Adobe does not give a damn. Unbelievable. We'd be dead as a company if we were like Adobe.

I am using Word 2003 and Acrobat Pro 8, and the MS Word doc has running headers and footers. The Styleref field in my header is STYLEREF Heading1 \* MERGEFORMAT. I am also facing the same problem of unwanted characters appearing in the PDF output. But what has created a bigger problem is my MS Word document is showing these unwanted characters as well in the headings, after I convert the doc to PDF! Has anybody faced the same problem? Any suggestions on why and how to solve this?

I recently encountered this problem using Word2007 and searched here for a possible answer.

The problem occurs for me ONLY when I use the "Convert Word Headings to Bookmarks" option to get the bookmarks in pane on the right. If I turn this off, the problem goes away. But I need the bookmarks, so I had to dig deeper.

Post 40 by Harold Roberson put me on the right track for getting rid of it. Maybe this will work for you too. The Styleref name is not merely case sensitive, but must appear exactly as in "Element" column of the bookmark configuration.

In my documents, I use a style called "H1", which is a flavor of Heading 1. The Styleref field in my header said { STYLEREF H1 \* MERGEFORMAT }. When I changed it to { STYLEREF "Heading 1,H1" \* MERGEFORMAT } (exactly as it appears in the style list), those extra characters before the Styleref in the header went away, and my bookmarks were fine.

Hope that helps someone else.

Kathy Buck (post 44) - I think your problem is slightly different. Check if your third writer has the exact same fonts as you on her system. This could account for those different characters.