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Pacific.guy1
Participant
June 16, 2020
Question

Problem editing PDF text in Acrobat 9

  • June 16, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 1125 views

I am baffled about the use of the Touch Up Text Tool in Acrobat 9.  My question is that sometimes when I click on it and then click on a point in the text to edit, nothing happens.  In my case, I have received a book file in PDF from someone else, and am not able to edit it.  He insists that the file is not locked. On the other hand, files I create in Word and save as PDF are easily edited by the touch up tool.  Is there some reason a file cannot be edited if it is not locked?  Is there something I'm overlooking?

 

Thank you for your consideration!

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    1 reply

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    June 17, 2020

    What looks like text might actually be text that was converted to outlines (i.e. vectors) or raster (images) and as such cannot be edited as text in Acrobat.

     

    (BTW, please don't double post. Your duplicate post to a 10 year old thread has been deleted.)

     

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
      P
      Pacific.guy1Author
      Participant
      June 17, 2020

      Thank you for your comments, and rest assured I won't double post.  This is my first day in the community, and I'm just learning my way.

       

      Is there a way to tell if what looks like text was converted to outlines or images?  It looks like text, but I realize that cold be deceiving.  Also, is there a way of telling that a PDF document has been locked? 

        Dov Isaacs
        Dov Isaacs
        Legend
        June 17, 2020

        The simple question first ...

         

        If you use Ctrl-D for Document Properties and look under the Security tab. That will indicate whether the PDF file is protected or not.

         

        Assuming that the file is not protected, if you can't select the text, it pretty much indicates that it is not actual text. There are other ways of examining objects, but that requires using the Object Inspector of the Output Preview tool to ascertain what PDF objects are under the cursor's current position.

         

        - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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