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Q
quintonv31658388
Participant
November 25, 2018
Answered

Copying and pasting text in PDF turns to gibberish

  • November 25, 2018
  • 15 replies
  • 363084 views

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.

    Correct answer Isa37131267pfkw

    Hi guys, I just found a solution and thought it might help someone.

    Basically you can just open the google translate app on your phone, and use the image translation function (camera) to scan the file. Note that you'll need to set both the detected and result languages same as the file language, otherwise it'll  translate into another language. When the process completes, select 'copy text', and then you can copy the text. You're welcome!

    15 replies

    Show previous replies
    L
    Lars236552742rnc
    Participant
    March 19, 2022

    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.

      Q
      Qais Shawish5FA9
      Participant
      October 22, 2021

      Take a photo from ipone and copy your text.

        V
        Vladimir5C90
        Participant
        October 2, 2020

        Hi, Foxit Reader (free version) worked immediately!

          J
          John5EF3
          Participant
          November 20, 2020

          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. 

            J
            jeniffer50B7
            Participant
            December 1, 2020

            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.  

            mattf36860683
            mattf36860683
            Participant
            June 1, 2019

            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"

              M
              Mell17
              Participating Frequently
              March 24, 2020

              "Copy with formatting"worked. Thank you!

              Adorobat
              Community Manager
              AdorobatCommunity Manager
              Community Manager
              November 26, 2018

              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

              I
              Ivo K
              Participating Frequently
              February 18, 2022

              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!

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