Acrobat Standard DC printing garbled weird characters since last update

[tipweb]

Hello,

since the last update, when I open pdfs in Acrobat Standard DC they look just as expected, yet if I try to print them as usual to an HP Laserjet, the printed output results in garbled, illegible characters, quite similar as described here Strange fonts  and here Scrambled Text when viewing PDF documents in Acrobat Standard XI

In the above referenced thread the accepted solution is to apply this hotfix: Acrobat Help | Release notes | Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC | Update 

I tried to apply it, but this is for the continuous version of Acrobat, yet I am using Acrobat Standard DC, version 2015.006.30394.

I have also tried to

• Use the Help menu > Check for updates, no more updates are being offered
• repair the installation
• reboot
• install 15.006.30392 Planned update, November 14, 2017 from this page DC Release Notes — Acrobat and Adobe Reader Release Notes (2015 Classic Track) - but that would not roll back the installation to 15.006.30392 as I had hoped.

The problem persists - and seems to have been introduced by the last (Novemberish) "update".

So now I would either like to receive a fix for what was broken in the last update, or learn of a way to revert to the previous version which had worked - presumably 15.006.30392.

Can anyone point me to a solution please? Thank you in advance.

[Abambo]

Does "Print as image" (advanced tab of the Acrobat print dialogue) print the document as expected?

[tipweb · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the reply.

Yes, "print as image" does print the document as expected.

(I had tried this earlier and found it as a workaround - yet this isn't a really solution to the problem introduced by Adobe by the last update...)

[Abambo]

you’re right, it is a workaround not a solution. Printing time gets raised considerably with this and print quality may be degraded.

What is your OS and version?

[tipweb]

This instance of Acrobat is installed in Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate; 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

[Abambo]

Print to a virtual printer. like Microsoft XPS.

The problem you describe looks much more like a communication problem between the application and the printer driver! In this context: Are you sure to have the current printer drivers? Do not trust Windows. Go to the HP website to load them.

[tipweb]

I have the original and current HP drivers installed, and am at times also using the VM Thin Print drivers. Both have worked as expected before the Acrobat update and have printed correctly, and have not been touched since. They also work perfectly fine with any other program - except Acrobat DC.

Only since the Acrobat update printing is corrupted. As described in the above referenced threads, sometimes upon rebooting, things print as expected - but for a limited time only. Here's a sample from one of the threads what a print looks like

How can I uninstall the last update which seems to have caused this behavior?

[Abambo]

Well, they work also fine with "Print as image", so communication with the printer works perfectly.

I suppose that "Affaire suivie par" and "Renseignements client" are preprints? Are the numbers correct? 51210 could be a French Zip code!

Are other documents printing?

What is the font in your document and is it embedded?

The aim to print to XPS is to test printing to some other printer than the HP, to see if the problem is in connection with the printer subsystem or Adobe.

Acrobat seams to be quite sticky with it's versions. The only trick I'm aware of to ask for a prior version is to ask the download for an older OS:

This however will make your installation vulnerable.

It could be of help to share a dummy document (ie one with dummy data in) so that we could analyse the document.

[tipweb]

As mentioned, the included image comes from this thread Strange fonts  and is only to illustrate what kind of printout I am getting - garbled characters.

The file looks perfectly fine in Acrobat Standard DC - only when printing this odd behavior shows up, particularly with invoices, say from a postal or Telekom provider, but I also had it with a file from Sibelius (musical note program). If I am trying to find any logic, I'd say scanned pdfs normally seem to work, as do files that I have generated myself (e.g. from Word, printed to Acrobat).

Also, as mentioned, other documents print just fine on this printer.

The fonts in one of the documents that has been not printing correctly were Helvetica and Arial.

When printed to MS xps, the output is as exactly as expected.

Here's a sample document, which outputs characters such as illustrated in the image above when printed from Acrobat Standard DC: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AkkylM9bShVFkjw4pwHFKrYCOBT8