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Content disappears when I flatten a pdf

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Content disappears when I flatten certain pdfs. Specifically, I have noted that Text Boxes vanish in some of my PDFs when I flatten them. How do I prevent this from happening?

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Luke Jennings

Inspiring

I suspect the vanishing text boxes are annotations or form fields. If so, you can run preflight fixups (Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups) to flatten the annotations or form fields into the page content.

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jmt111Author

Inspiring

Dave_M: I am using Version 10.1.16 of Adobe Acrobat X on Windows 10 Pro. To flatten a PDF, I go to:

Print Production | Preflight | Flatten annotations and form fields | Analyze and fix | Save as a new version.

I have not found a relationship between PDFs in which this occurs. It appears to be random. I have not tried to flatten them on another computer. I am not even sure if my license allows me to install Acrobat X on another computer.

Luke_Jennings: The vanishing text boxes are text boxes that I add to my PDFs by going to Tools | Content | Add or Edit Text Box.

You said to “run preflight fixups (Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups) to flatten the annotations or form fields into the page content.” I believe this refers to the same steps that I am following, which I referred to above.

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Luke Jennings

Inspiring

I don't have Acrobat X (or a windows machine) but I can't replicate your issue with Acrobat DC.

Are you fully updated? Are you viewing the PDF in Acrobat or Reader, with Output Preview showing all colors? (the added text may be RGB). In Acrobat X, Do you see a preflight named "Discard hidden content and flatten visible layers"? Try that.

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Dave__M

Community Expert

That's certainly not supposed to happen! Can you share some more information? What program/version/OS? And what technique are you using to flatten the PDF? You mentioned "certain PDFs" are affected. Are they related? Created from the same source application? Same person? Have you had a chance to try to flatten them on another computer?

Anything you can provide might help troubleshoot this issue.

My best,

Dave

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Thom Parker

Community Expert

How are you flattening and why?

What type of thing are these text boxes? Are they form fields? Do they contain text?

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Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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