Adobe Acrobat DC Pro Print to PDF with Editable Textfields

[xz_xu]

Hello - I am trying to print a webpage into pdf format using Adobe's Print to PDF "printer". However, whenever I do so, the text of the resulting pdf seems to be uneditable as the pdf is in like an "image" or "scan" form. Highlighting anything on the pdf highlights weird shapes rather than the text, and attempting to edit the text using the edit tool messes the entire format up.

However, printing this exact same webpage on another PC using the exact same process leads to a clean pdf where every text paragraph is in its own textbox and can be edited without affecting the document provided the font is installed. I transferred the resulting pdf from this PC to my initial PC, and was still able to edit everything. This leads me to believe it is the problem with the distiller rather than the reader/editor.

Is there some sort of setting in the distiller/printer that forces it to recognize text as actual text and print the document with text fields vs making it into a scan/image?

Thanks for the help!

[gary_sc]

Hi XZ_XU,

If you are using "Print to PDF" or "Save as PDF," you are not using anything from Adobe. To print to PDF with Adobe Acrobat, you need to select "Print/Save to Adobe PDF"

 (this screenshot is from a Mac, the PC view may be different)

 

When you do this via the former approach, you are relying upon the Operating System to do the process which, as you have noted, may not always provide the desired results. And you are correct, the problem IS with the distiller, it's just not Adobe's distiller.

[xz_xu]

Hi Gary_sc,

Thank you for your reply. This did actually help me narrow down the problem. I double checked with my other PC and it was indeed different distillers. However, the issue is it's actually Adobe's distiller that is making weird pdfs.

I have "Adobe PDF" as a printer, which I assume is the Adobe's distiller. I also have "Save to PDF", which thanks to your confirmation, is the Windows native distiller. The Windows one seems to process the pdf with text fields properly on both machines, while the Adobe one produces weird files.

Any ideas? Thanks again.

[gary_sc]

Well, at least we're making progress! ;>)

What/where is the original document/application?

Are you doing anything special in preparing the document? Are you taking any shortcuts?

Thanks

[xz_xu]

The only shortcut I use is Ctrl+P to bring up the print menu in Chrome. Printing literally any webpage with text results in the same thing - Adobe distiller producing a pdf that can't be edited, while the Windows pdf can. I have a feeling this isn't a bug so much as simply how Adobe prints their pdfs. Perhaps there's no way around it, especially since a google search didn't bring up any related threads.

[gary_sc]

OK, you're printing-PDFing web pages?

Please try an experiment: Go to PrintFriendly.com and follow their instructions for working with their application. 

Let me know what happens.

[xz_xu]

The extension works as expected and I am able to create an editable pdf from a webpage. I can do so with Windows' native distiller as well. I am just wondering if Adobe's distiller may be changed such that it operates the same. If not, no biggie as the native distiller works perfectly fine.

[gary_sc]

OK, glad that worked.

Now, I have to start out that there very well may be some issue with your copy of Acrobat. It should not be doing what it's doing but as a Mac guy, I'm not fully sure what the best way to deal with that is. Un-installing and re-installing might be in order. Rebuilding the Preferences is another possible approach but I am guess at both. Curiously, what you are experiencing is exactly opposit what could/should happen: no problem with the Windows generated PDF and problems with the Acrobat generated PDFs. 

The fact that PrintFriendly also worked fine supports that there's something wrong with your Acrobat. 

Now I have to say that I use PrintFriendly for about 98% of all of my web -> PDF conversions becuase I really like the features it provides and the fact that it's a flat PDF is not critical for my needs. I also LOVE how I can exclude just about anything I want from the PDF before conversion so that I do not get any comments, photos, or adds that might slip into a PDF generated by the OS or Acrobat.

YMMV because I do not know the nature of your websites you are PDF-ing. 

Hopefully someone with more PC knowledge will pipe in here and provide some suggestions on how to fix your Acrobat. Please do try what I did suggest because it's very likely they will sugggest the same things and if they do not work you can tell them: "tried that, problem sill exists, what's next?"