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Rbcap
Participating Frequently
January 16, 2022
Question

Cannot Select Text in Acrobat Professional DC

  • January 16, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 3748 views

When I try to select text, I can't select an individual sentence or line but a much larger area gets selected automatically. If I copy the larger selected area and try to paste it in a document (e.g. a Word document) only garbage (like raw code) gets pasted. This happens only in pdf documents that were created using Acrobat DC. The Security settings of the document shows "No Security".

 

It sounds like a basic feature that one would expect to be able to do but I've tried everything I could do, with no success. This happens with pdf documents that I created with Acrobat DC, e.g. by printing a webpage using "Adobe PDF" as the selected printer. I've seen a number of other posts regarding this but none had a real solution.So it seems like a common and serious issue with Acrobat DC. Does anyone have a solution for this? Does anyone know how to bring this to the attention of Adobe if that is needed to resolve this.  

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    1 reply

    gary_sc
    Community Expert
    gary_scCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 16, 2022

    Hi Rbcap,

     

    I have Acrobat Pro on my 2015 5K iMac running Big Sur and I'm not having any issues selecting single words of text on PDFs that were created with Acrobat Pro.

     

    I'm not saying you are not having the problem (obviously you are), but the problem MAY be specific to your system. It MAY be due to installation issues. It MAY be a screwup in Acrobat's preferences or your computer's preferences. It MAY also be somewhere else. 

     

    Can you help by providing more information on what you have so that various items can be ruled out?

    R
    RbcapAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 17, 2022

    Thank you for your comments Gary.

     

    I am using Windows 10 Business Version 20H2 and MS 365. Since you're not having the issue, I wonder if that could be because you are using a different operating system than I am. Also, are you using Acrobat Pro DC? If so, have you tried creating a PDF from a website page by printing the page using Adobe PDF as the printer? I'm just wondering if it could be a compatibility problem with Windows 10 and Acrobat Pro DC. In my case, a PDF is produced but I cannot select text. Tx  

    gary_sc
    Community Expert
    gary_scCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 17, 2022

    Hi Rbcap,

     

    That was exactly my point. 

     

    On the Mac, when you are in the Print dialog, there is a dropdown menu for PDF generation: 

    When you use "Save a PDF," the operating system generates the PDF while the latter is generated by Acrobat. 

     

    However, that, in itself, should not be causing any issues. Do you mind sending me (via PM) one of your problem PDFs? To do this you'll have to rename the pdf suffix to something like .jpg. So, MyDocument.pdf will become MyDocument.jpg. When I receive it, I'll rename it with the pdf suffix. I want to see if infact the problem is the generation of the PDF or your copy of Acrobat. If I can select words, the generation is not the issue.

     

    Thanks!

     

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