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johng7
Participant
February 24, 2023
Question

Adobe Acrobat Pro XI - Combined files include corrupt files

  • February 24, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1855 views

I routinely combine multiple files to be able to compare and search within the file.

When combining files in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI, several files in each batch are coming out corrupt - either missing characters, or fonts (e.g. rectangles instead of letters) 

In each case, the original file is fine - legible, and with no security.  

In many cases, I can go back and "print" the file, then combine it and it works. (although this is quite cumbersome).  Note: trying to fix each file is not really an option since they are different each time.

Is there a way to combine these files without them becoming corrupted?  Or at least tell if a file is safe to combine?

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1 reply

ls_rbls
Community Expert
ls_rblsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 24, 2023

Hi,

 

If everything was working fine before and this prpblem just happened out of nowhere, 

My guess would be to  repair Adobe Acrobat and then manually re-apply the latest update that was published for your version.

J
johng7Author
Participant
February 24, 2023

Thank you for your response.  

The issue is not new, and has been going on for that last few versions of Acrobat Pro, over several computers.

In the past, I managed this by going to each of the corrupted files and "printing" them using Acrobat prior to combining.  This seems to solve the problem, however, in some cases when that does not work, I have to print them to something else such as Microsoft XPS, then convert that to a useable file.

My assumption is that there must be a method or setting that I am missing.

ls_rbls
Community Expert
ls_rblsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 25, 2023

Interesting...

 

Seems like an issue with Acrobat Distiller and the unsupported older versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro that you're using (just a guess in the blind here).

 

But since you've mentioned about printing, that is an entire different method of producing a PDF document than "Export To", "Import From", "Save As", "Combine Files".

 

So, I am wondering if the random  issue occurs because of unsupported font types, or some sort of copyright-related issue with some font type foundry that won't allow embedding.

 

See this brief discussion:

 

 

In which case, since the Combine Files tool works quietly you won't be able to spot very well what exactly is happening.

 

You'll get a better chance to see what exactly are the error messages if instead of printing with a third-party service, save the misbehaving file(s) as a postscript file.

 

The Acrobat Distiller is directly involved using this method and will pop warning and alert messages that will aid you in finding the exact problem with those corrupted files.

 

But anyhow, I've experienced this too even with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (latest update).

 

This tells me that a font type substitute is not available in my version of Microsoft Windows.

 

If this is your case, you must configure your Acrobat Distiller to embedd and subset all available font types.

 

If you are already familiarize with the Acrobat Distiller, check out the links below to see if you are missing any steps:

 

 

You may have to manually configure different printing templates and test each one.

 

If you're able to share one of those files with no sensitive data on it I can take a look at it.

 

 

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