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A
Anonymous
July 10, 2020
Question

Can't convert combined scanned documents to PDF/a (Acrobat Pro X and 2017)

  • July 10, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 1093 views

I have multiple documents that need to combined to PDF/A. They may be any combination of the following:

-Word documents generated from templates

-PDF documents generated from Word documents

-PDF documents generated from scanned documents (in PDF/A format with OCR, both from the scanning software; these are the majority)

-PDF documents generated from fax-to-email (not in PDF/A format)

 

The documents might be anywhere from a few pages to several hundred pages. Many have been faxed/printed then later scanned. They contain printed text, handwriting, images, logos...some in poor quality due to multiple faxes back and forth.

 

I am using Acrobat Pro 2017 and had the same issue with Acrobat Pro X. I am running into frequent problems combining these documents and saving them as PDF/A. Preflight analysis indicates "font not embedded (and text rendering mode not 3)" and "fix" is unable to resolve the error.

 

What perplexes me is that I can start with two PDF/A documents, enable editing to combine them, then save as PDF/A and still get the error. I've seen forum posts where people discuss needing to address PDF/A compliance with the original documents rather than after combining, but shouldn't this work if that's the issue? What am I missing? 

 

My backup plan is to print to PDF then try again, but that's not the most efficient process. I was really hoping to set up an action to plow through a bunch of folders and combine/convert the contents with minimal user input, and I'm not sure if I can do this with this approach.

 

If anyone can explain why this is happening or offer suggestions on how to resolve the issue, I would appreciate it. I'm at a loss. Thanks!

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3 replies

swapnilsrivastava
swapnilsrivastava
Participating Frequently
July 12, 2020
 

Hi There,

 

Thanks for reporting the issue here.

As you're already a Pro user, we suggest to get the latest DC track instead of the older version; many feature(s) as per the expectations are available now. There are no fixes and changes done for Acrobat X and XI.

 

Please do let us know, if anything else is required from our end.

 

Regards,

Swapnil Srivastava

    N
    Nikaya2
    Participant
    July 20, 2020

    OP here. Not sure what happend, but Adobe forced me to create a new username when I logged in again.

     

    Sorry for the confusion. I am currently using Acrobat Pro 2017.

    I encountered the same issue a few years ago when I was using X and never found a soluton. I was hoping I could find a way to make this work now that I have 2017, but I am encountering the exact same issues that I had with the older version.

     

    I am not very experienced with preflight, embedding, etc., so I was hoping that I might just be missing something. I can scan a document in PDF/A, but if I enable editing to combine with another (that was also scanned as PDF/A), then I am unable to save the combined file as PDF/A. Does it matter that these documents are often poor quality copies/faxes with handwriting, etc.? The font issues that I checked just now appear to be a font (Helvetica) that's similar but not exactly the same as what I have installed (multiple variations of HelveticaNeue...). Does that matter? Am I missing something? 

     

    I really need to find a way to archive these documents appropriately, and I'm at a loss right now.

     

     

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    July 20, 2020

    PDF/A is intended for use as a final format, not to be edited in any way. Combining may not seem to be editing, but it is. So you should certainly not scan as PDF/A if you intend to combine files. Make regular PDF and combine and finally convert to PDF/A.

    Amal.
    Amal.
    Legend
    July 10, 2020

    Hi there

     

    ++ Adding on to the discussion

     

    Adobe Acrobat X is an old and EOL application. For more information please take a look at the help page End of support for Acrobat X and Reader X

     

    Regards

    Amal

    N
    Nikaya2
    Participant
    July 20, 2020

    OP here. Not sure what happend, but Adobe forced me to create a new username when I logged in again.

    Sorry for the confusion. I am currently using Acrobat Pro 2017. I encountered the same issue a few years ago when I was using X and never found a soluton. I was hoping I could find a way to make this work now that I have 2017, but I am encountering the exact same issues that I had with the older version.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    July 10, 2020

    The message "font not embedded (and text rendering mode not 3)" is specific, if not very clear. This is something you need to resolve. I don't see that you couldn't combine into regular PDF, then use preflight to sort this out, then make PDF/A. If it even can be sorted, do you have the relevant font?

    N
    Nikaya2
    Participant
    July 20, 2020

    OP here. Not sure what happend, but Adobe forced me to create a new username when I logged in again.

    Unfortunately, I'm not very experienced with preflight but here's what I've gathered (I think): in this specific test run, there were a couple dozen instances of this font issue. Double-clicking on the error took me to some text that was in Helvetica font. I have several variations of HelveticaNeueforSAS, but not just simple Helvetica. Because my source documents are being sent to me from externals rather than created (usually over electronic fax or scanned from mail), I have no control over the fonts used. It is also not practical to install track down an install all potential font issues.

     

    It perplexes me that if I scan a stack of mail using software that scans as PDF/A, I have no issues. But if I enable editing to combine a couple documents, I can't save the combined document as PDF/A due to this error.

     

    In the past, I was able to successfully print the combined document using a PDF printer then save that file as PDF/a. I'm now getting an error with that process as well. However, I was using combines of combines (for no particular reason other than having multiple combined documents present in folders from lots of testing). I wonder if that's an issue and will try again using only original documents rather than those that were previously combined.

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