Cannot change font, size or anything for typewriter tool

Hi, All

I'm new to Acrobat Pro (using Pro 9.3) and sought out this thread for the same reasons everyone else is here.  This disclaimer is, I'm no Acrobat expert by any means.

But after suffering some of the many frustrations reported on this thread, I played around with the form I was filling in with the typewriter and concluded that the problem was basically the lack of a non-image layer in the PDF to type the text on.  I think this is an Acrobat bug.  But I did find two fairly straightforward workarounds.  (Actually, it may have to do with the color mode of the image layer in the absense of a non-image layer -- see below.)

The problems seem to come from scanned forms as best I can tell from this thread and looking over many other threads elsewhere discussing the same problem.  Mine certainly did.

I found when I typed in the margin outside the scanned area, the adjustments in the Typewriter toolbar came alive.  And has several folks have posted here, the adjustments stick around for the session but won't work after closing and reopening the form (I say form, but it's only an image of a form, not an Acrobat form).  Or maybe I've misstated that in that the adjustments go away after selecting other tools and returning to the Typewriter.

The best workaround is to OCR the scanned form.  This completely removed the problem in my limited testing, hypothetically because it adds an invisibile text layer which, again hypothetically, you can type on without the limitations.  I say hypothetically because I've only tried it a couple of times, but all the problems disappeared instantly.  That is, it's a guess; but it looks to be a fair guess.

In my experiments with OCR, the smallest file size results from the Exact setting, probably because it doesn't mess with the scanned image whereas the other OCR settings insert various Adobe text renderings of sizes from big to monstrous and also screw around with the images for alignment and whatnot.  This is another hypothesis, but I'd bet on it.

The other workaround is, once you've scanned the document, print it back to a pdf with Adobe PDF printer (or maybe another PDF printer, like PDF Creator -- dunno, haven't experimented with that).  I'd bet that adds some other layer also, or at least prevents the scanned image to be treated as simply an image layer in Acrobat, but this is pure guesswork.  Anyhow, it seems to work with Adobe PDF printer.

In my particular case, the scanned form itself was about 108KB, the Exact OCR'd version of it was 140KB, and the version printed on Adobe PDF was 876KB.  A simple four-page form, originally scanned as two-level black and white.

Hmm, it just occurred to me that the B&W scan itself might be a component of this problem, since that obviously abrogates the possibility of selecting a color for the text on the B&W layer.  This may frustrate a poor little typing tool too lazy to check it's options one at a time.  I'll try a color scan right now ...

Well, by gum, that seems to unlock the Typewriter options.  I scanned in color, saved it, typed on it (Typewriter options active), saved that, closed it, reopened it, and edited previously typed text in which Typewriter options were active again.  Not so with my original B&W doc.  This suggests a third workaround is to scan in color.  The color scan (just one page of the same four-page document above) was 400KB or so, so this is clearly more expensive than OCR Exact on a two-level B&W doc, as I would expect.  Also more expensive than reprinting through Adobe PDF printer (one page at 400KB versus 4 pages at 800KB through the printer).  This is, of course, only one example.

All this suggests to me that the Typewriter options are all or nothin'.  If it's typing on a B&W layer, it can't be all, so it's nothin'.  Apparently Typewriter doesn't check too often, so if you start typing in the margin (as I did), or outside of the page (as others here report), it figures it can do all, so as long as you keep typing, it works.  You can type many different fields, as I found when I filled out the whole four-page document, not understanding the thin ice I was skating on.

As soon as you do something else, when you start typing again it appears to check again and decides it's nothin'.  Or something like that.  As I've said, this is all hypothetical, but it hangs together and bears checking out.  If Adobe ever gets around to this problem, an ancient one, judging from the Google hits.

Anyhow, I hope this helps somebody.  I was only frustrated for a few hours, so I got off lucky.

Regards,

Spots Stoddard

I'm using Adobe Professional 8.1.2 and thanks to the replies in this thread, I can now at least get the text size larger or smaller...

However, I don't seem to have the ability to change the FONT. 'Text style' only gives me bold or italics options; I'd like to change to a proportional font to save space (and because I really don't like courier). Is there any way change the font type? Or do I have to upgrade to 9.0 to do this (and even then, can I change the font type?)

thanks!

I note there are over 5000 hits on this issue.  There are also numerous other threads for exactly the same thing.  I thing we have a real bug.  Typewriter and text box edit appears not to function (YES we are blocking the text, yes we double click, we try absolutely everything to stop the edit functions from being greyed out NO IT DOES NOT WORK).  This is the same for use of the 'touch up text' tool which does NOT work according to instructions.

I am convinced this is not a user problem. 

Could somebody please tell me how we stop talking about it and get support to DO something, or at least fess up so we can stop wasting our time!

Or am I being naive?

Capitals indicate frustration and not anger or abuse to anybody in particular.

I believe I have good news for all who have this trouble. It's been annoying since day one.

I accidentally discovered that by setting your cursor just off the edges of the document and begin your typing, the font properties always remain easily available!

Once you have created a typed message (any number of characters is okay), you can then drag the filled-in Typewriter Text Box to any location on the document; and you can continue to edit, at will!

Using the Typewriter Tool, I've had less than 05% font selection success when I type directly on/in the document.

Using the Typewriter Tool, I've had 100% font selection success by starting my typing in this space just off the document surface. Once finished typing, I just drag the box to the document surface. I hope this works for you, too!

See image. To enlage this image, press your Ctrl key and scroll. Good luck!

I also noted that it seemed to be a bug with double-spaced text.  The text is double-spaced with carriage returns, and then the double-spaces disappear. I had to put a space at the beginning of every blank line to avoid problems. Maybe the development team can play with some double-spaced text and see if they can reproduce the problem.

I have had the same problem and find it quite frustrating.

I just spent an hour fighting with a form to adjust the text spacing.

What worked was saving under a new name, closing the document AND exiting Acrobat 9, then restarting Acrobat 9 and editing the document again.

I also noted that when I tried to resize the text box with the Shift key depressed, which I had used as a shortcut for changing the spacing in previous versions, and is used in other Adobe products, I got a generic "internal error."

I was having same problem trying to fill in a job application form, and all the tips above did not work -- Sometimes the Typewriter Toolbox would let me change font sizes and edit text, but most of the time it would not. After 2 hours of frustration, I looked at the Properties for the document I was working in and under Security tab there is a small note at the bottom: that this document "restricts some features to allow extended features in Adobe Reader. To create a copy of the document that is not restricted (and has no extended features in Reader), choose File> Save A Copy."

I did "save a copy" and was able to finish typing in the application and send it in. Even going back and forth between different programs and switching tools in Acrobat did not lock out the editing functions of the Typewriter Tool as had happened earlier.  I hope this works for everyone else, too.

I'm having this same problem.  I've attempted all the suggested solutions (reboot, "never" view in PD/A mode, enable typewriter tool in Reader) but none of them works.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

My guess would be to reboot the computer

Hi Lorne!

Try this.  Go into your Preferences (Edit --> Preferences) and choose the "Documents" category.  In the PDF/A View Mode select "never" for "View documents in PDF/A mode."  Let me know if this helps.

The other thing to try in a document where Typewriter doesn't work properly is Tools --> Typewriter --> Enable Typewriter Tool in Adobe Reader.  Sometimes this works for me.

hb