copying from pdf to clipboard

Try this,

If you're in Microsoft Windows clear the contents of the clipboard using this guidance :

• https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/672429/how-to-clear-your-clipboard-history-on-windows-10/amp/

If you're on macOS use this guidance:

• https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-clear-the-clipboard-on-a-mac

Then try copying between programs again but notice the following observations below:

When copying from Adobe Acrobat to a Micrososft Word document, before you paste anything make sure that you've enabled editing in the MS Word document.

If you've already done that, when you right-click to paste in MS Word take a look at the different  Paste Options that MS Word gives you via the context menu:

• Keep Source Formatting
• Merge Formatting
• Keep Text Only

Keep Source Formatting will paste the clipboard content exactly as it appears formatted in a Acrobat PDF textfield object that has any type of "Rich-text formatting", including Font type(s), base-line shift or paragraph line spacing properties, for example.

Merge Formatting, on the other hand, will paste the same content as it appears in the Acrobat textfield objects and may respect, bold, ubderline, Italic character types properties but will merge those properties with whatever Font type and Font type properties the MS Word document is using.

I would say that your best bet is to always paste as the desired content as "Keep Text Only" which I believe forces this pasting action to use Unicode only as the universal standard.

And I may be wrong, but for the sake of troublseshooting your issue, this is to rule out the possibility of Acrobat, MS Word, and even the operating, triggering this error if different Unicode encoding formats are used by each program independently from each other.

Like I said, I may be wrong, I hope I was able to explain this the right way.

In short, whichever the case may be, if you are copying free text content from an opened document in Acrobat, or copying a text string from a textfield object, just paste it in MS Word as plain text.