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Martin5C30
New Participant
October 1, 2020
Answered

Crazy spacing between characters when editing PDF

  • October 1, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 4508 views

Dear Acrobat community,

please have you ever seen such problem in Adobe Acrobat? Spacing between characters seems completely broken when we try to rewrite some text using "Edit PDF" tool. It happens in more PDF files on Mac with the latest Catalina version, but there is no problem in editing the same files on another Macs.

It seems the problem is related only to PDF files exported from FileMaker. PDF file exported from Word can be edited without any problem.


It happens in Acrobat Pro 2017 and Acrobat Pro 2020 (the latest version downloaded from Adobe site yesterday).

Restart didn't help.
This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer try67

Editing PDF files in this manner should be a last resort, and only done for very minor adjustments, as they were never meant to be edited like it, at all. If you have access to the original FileMaker file make the edits there and then create a new PDF file from it.

1 reply

try67
try67Correct answer
Community Expert
October 1, 2020

Editing PDF files in this manner should be a last resort, and only done for very minor adjustments, as they were never meant to be edited like it, at all. If you have access to the original FileMaker file make the edits there and then create a new PDF file from it.

    M
    Martin5C30Author
    New Participant
    October 1, 2020

    thank you try67. You are absolutely right. Sometimes it's just handy to do some minor changes in Acrobat after the export from FileMaker. I will mark your reply as the correct answer shortly if there won't appear any explanation of such chaos: 

    gary_sc
    gary_sc
    Community Expert
    October 1, 2020

    As a long time Filemaker user (since v 1) and have been exporting to PDFs from the very beginning, I have to say I've never seen anything like this. 

     

    Typically one does see this when OCRing text. Acrobat's OCR sometimes has issues understanding the tracking between letters and the resultant OCR can become a bit of a mess.

     

    However, text from electronically formatted is almost always spot on in the PDF. 

     

    Can you elaborate on what that section of text is from? Could it have been a field that was pasted into rather than filled in? Please note that in FM you have an option to "Paste Text Only" that enters the raw text with no formatting.

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