Copying and pasting text in PDF turns to gibberish

[quintonv31658388]

Using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC as my default printer.

When trying to copy and paste text from pdf to another app, the text appears as gibberish (symbols, etc.)

Some pdf prints also do not allow for copying/highlighting of lines of text - tried "Enhance Scan" to ensure OCR and flow but still cannot select single words or lines of text in some documents.

[Adorobat · Accepted solution]

Hi quintonv,

As mentioned, you are getting gibberish text when copying and pasting text from pdf, it seems the issue seems to be the font related.

If the fonts of PDF don't have Unicode tables and do not use standard encoding for mapping the glyph indices to characters then you get garbage characters during copy/paste.

Also, there is a possibility the fonts used to create the PDF file are not available on your system.

you may try using the PDF Fixup Profile "Embed Fonts" in the Preflight tool to embed the font and check if that helps. However, the font does need to be installed on your system.

You may also refer to the following forum threads discussing the similar issue:

Copy text in pdf gives me gibberish. Is there a way to OCR to correct?

PDF problem: copy and paste results in squares

Weird characters pasted after copying text from PDF file

Copy text from a PDF to word. Just get Symbols

Thanks,

-Shivam

[Ivo K]

this is not the case.

very last version of Acrobat DC is not copying entire font - missing characters - afres pasting it do INDD there is missing characters.

this never happned to me in the older versions!

the print pdf was created on MY computer, with all fonts embeded, no I need to make some corrections and it’s not possible anymore without this terrible issue.

Acroobat DC has serious problem to copy and paste fonts from pdf!

[mattf36860683 · Accepted solution]

Try right clicking the text and "copy with formatting".

I have been trying to OCR Japanese documents and copy/pasting doesn't work, exporting as Word doesn't work. However, right clicking and "copy with formatting" *does* work, but apparently only for very small sections of text.

Not sure if it will work with other documents, but give it a try and see how you go.

This seems to be an ongoing and unfixed issue in Acrobat. All the various "solutions" refer to the lack or corruption of font information, but if the scanned document was OCRed in Acrobat, then surely that is an Acrobat problem, not a "font issue"

[Mell17]

"Copy with formatting"worked. Thank you!

[alokr46355674]

Hi, Thanks for this suggestion it's working. 🙂 Is there any way to fix the whole PDF?

[dawnmomoffour26052460qd5q]

I have no 'copy with formatting' when I right click the text

[alokr46355674]

Use Acrobat DC Pro. This option is not available in the Acrobat Reader DC. 

[Susan31115519r5w6]

I have Pro and I don't have it either.

[glamLA]

Did not work

[Vladimir5C90]

Hi, Foxit Reader (free version) worked immediately!

[John5EF3]

Found another solution for Pro DC as of Nov 2020 version 2020.013.20064 (non of those other solutions worked for me): print to pdf>save file>open new doc>select edit function>copy/paste. 

[jeniffer50B7]

this is not working for me.  when i print to pdf, and save the file, it does not five me an option to open new doc.  

[glamLA]

Still gibberish

[Serene_nature15C3]

Hi @glamLA 

Hope you are doing well and sorry to hear that

Is this an issue with a particular PDF file or with all the PDFs? Please try with a different PDF file and check. If the file is stored on a shared network/drive please download it to your computer locally and then try again.

What is the workflow/steps you are doing? A small video recording of the same would be very helpful.

What is the version of the Acrobat DC you are using? To check the version go to Help > About Acrobat and make sure you have the recent version 23.01.20143 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also try to repair the installation from the help menu (Win Only) and see if that works.

Please try to reset the Acrobat preferences as described here https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/how-to-reset-acrobat-preference-settings-to-defau...

You may also try to create a new test user profile with full admin rights in Win or enable the root account in MAC and try using the application there and check.

Regards

Amal

[glamLA]

None of this works. Adobe- Please fix this. I spent over an hour trying to fix this. It's multiple files.

How I fixed it: 

Opened all pages of teh original PDF in Adobe Illustrator, saved as new PDF file, which rebuilt the document and then opened in Acrobat DC.

[quail37760968l064]

This works well for me.

[Qais Shawish5FA9]

Take a photo from ipone and copy your text.

[Lars236552742rnc]

Have the exact same problem.

Adobe DC used to be able to handle "unicode" text, but unfortunately, Adobe (in their infinite wisdom) has elected to add a "randomisation algorithm". Now, when unicode text is imported, Adobe DC changes that to a randomly selected font.

The only workaround is to uninstall ALL fonts, except for the ones you want to use.

[Wes28303415aylj]

Neither of the "correct" answers work.

This is BS.  Just want to have acrobat pro be able to copy from pdf and paste.  Otherwise will need a different PDF solution.

[Michael29164618kbk0]

Same problem - scan in text to a Searchable PDF and the Greek words display correctly in the Acrobat reader.  But if I try to copy a section of the text to paste into another document (typically Word), the roman characters are fine, but the Greek text is gibberish.  Is there not a simple solution such as enabling Greek text or a particular font in Reader?

[YanMTL92]

Hello, I printed as PDF and ran a text recognition scan and in my case it fixed it. hopefully it works for you as well.

[YanMTL92]

I had that same issue this morning with some font in a large PDF that I needed to find some specifiec terms. I simply printed as PDF and ran a new text recognition scan on top, then saved and it worked like a charm.

hopefully this will help someone else in the same situation.

[Maï Maï]

Hello everyone,

I am on Mac and I have the same issue.
I created a large file under CorelDraw. 
When I try to copy from the PDf to Word, it works.
But when my colleagues open on their Windows computers, it does the gibberish once pasted in Word.

Please help (literally crying)

[abdo334586275qx2]

Simply edit the pdf then copy the text and it will work