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Averee C
Averee C
Inspiring
Feb 14, 2025 8:23 PM UTC
Question

Adobe Acrobat adds 6s where spaces should be

This is simply a bug report.

 

I've come across a rather strange issue. When I choose the "Save as Adobe PDF" option in Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat adds these superscripted 6s where spaces should be in the text. I have tested this quite a few times, and the issue appears to be with a font I am using, "Work Sans", when I italicize the font (using Microsoft Word's italic formatting option, NOT an italic version of the font itself). This issue does not appear with other fonts I have tried. The text renders fine in Microsoft Word itself, it's only when converted to a PDF that this happens.

My fix for this has just been to not italicize the text - I can't use a different font because this is one of our brand fonts, but I wanted to report the bug either way. It's very difficult to know if this is a Microsoft Word (latest version) issue, a font issue (Work Sans OTF, downloaded from Google Fonts), or Adobe Acrobat issue (latest version). I have been having issues with Work Sans in InDesign as well, as InDesign also refuses to render italicized Work Sans properly when exporting to PDF. I have tried re-downloading the font and it has not fixed the issue.

3 replies

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
Feb 15, 2025 10:36 PM UTC

Try using the Create PDF command from the Acrobat ribbon, instead.

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Averee C
Averee CAuthor
Inspiring
Feb 24, 2025 2:09 PM UTC

The Create PDF command from the Acrobat ribbon had no discernable differences

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Tariq Dar
Legend
May 22, 2025 2:05 PM UTC

Hi @Averee C,

 

Thanks for sharing the issue and related details.
Seeing 6s instead of spaces in your PDF after converting from Word is almost always related to a font encoding or embedding issue during the export process.

 

Here’s how you can fix or avoid this:

Steps to Convert Word to PDF Using Acrobat (to preserve fonts)

1. Open your Word document.

2. Go to the Acrobat tab in the Word ribbon.

(If you don’t see it, ensure Acrobat is installed and integrated with Office.)

3. Click “Create PDF”.

4. In the dialog that appears:

  • Click Preferences.

  • Under Application Settings, ensure “Convert Word Headings to Bookmarks” and “Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF” are checked.

  • Click the “Advanced Settings” button.

 

5. In the Adobe PDF Settings tab:

  • Among the list, click on Fonts

  • Make sure “Embed all fonts” is checked.

  • You may also want to check “Subset embedded fonts when percent of characters used is less than:” and leave it at 100%.

 

6. Click OK, then proceed to create the PDF.

 

Let us know how it works.


~Tariq

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