Colorless text when writing a new text in a PDF

[Leon1428]

Hello,

I have some PPT slides converted to PDF, in which I'm writing notes on top of. In the first slides, the text I'm writing appears normally, but after a few ones, the text I'm writing has no colour and looks like nothing is written (only the red underlined spelling errors marks appear but below "nothing"). 

Do you know how to solve this problem?

Thanks.

[Leon1428]

Obviously, I have already tried selecting my text and choosing a colour that is different from white. But this does not solve the problem, and the text still does not show.

[Subrato Namata]

Hi @Leon1428 , Apologies, could you please confirm if the issue is happening with a partcular ppt file or, in general happening with all ppt files conversions to pdf. ? Secondly, can you extract and share the problematic slide?

Regards,

Subrato

[Leon1428]

Hi Subrato,

Thanks for your reply.

This only happens with particular PDF files. I don't have this problem with all the files I open in Adobe PDF; this only happens with some particular PDF slides. 

I clarify: I assumed PPT was used for designing the slides (which later were shared as PDF versions) but this is an assumption from me. The authors of the slides could have used software other than PowerPoint to create the slides. I only got access to the PDF version of those slides, and not all the slides in the same document have the same problem; I can write and edit on one page, but on another, I can't, so the problem I raised here. 

I have extracted, and attached here, one of the slides of a PDF document that has this problem.

Thank you.

[S. S]

Hi @Leon1428,

Hope you are doing well. 

Thanks for sharing the file.

I have forwarded this to the development team for further investigation.

I will keep the thread updated as and when I hear back from them.

Regards,
Souvik.

[S. S]

Hi @Leon1428,

Thanks for sharing the files, and your patience.

I have logged a ticket for the team to investigate this further.

I request your kind understanding and patience while the team fixes this.

Regards,
Souvik.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Yes. I am seeing the same thing. I was able to recreate the issue.

Oddly, the entire document will not allow editing, even to the existing text on the page. There doesn't seem to be any Security/editing restrictions on the file, so this is weird.

Even more odd, I can copy and paste any "invisible text" created in your document into another PDF and it shows properly. although the reverse is not true.. i.e. added text on my other PDF will not paste into your document.

Also: I attempted to place the PDF into an InDesign document and it fails to import.

It WILL open in Illustrator (although wih the expected garbled encoding).

Stay tuned.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

In the meantime....

You could try an old pre-press trick we use to "refry" problematic PDFs:

Export your PDF as an EPS file (making sure in Settings under fonts to select Embedded and Referenced fonts, and, Under Color Management, select Same as Source).

Once that is done, open that resulting EPS in Acrobat. This will invoke Distiller (it will warn you about trust, click OK) and will regenerate the PDF.

It should be editable after that.

[Luke Jennings3]

Saving as an optimized PDF seems to fix the issue. Select Images, Fonts & Transparency (default settings). I have no idea why this works. The supplied pdf did originate from Powerpoint.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Cool. I had tried a few approaches like that as well, but didn't land on this one. Good to know!

Never did find what was "causing" the issue, though. I even went back to an old version of Acrobat I had on an old laptop and it also did not alllow editing.