edit text fails

[William276192849nda]

In a text box in edit mode, I want to correct some strange overlapping text to “one delightful”:

Starting with:

…I get this when I attempt to edit :

I can get back to the original with CNTL-Z command. The pdf file comes from a printer who had formatted an earlier version of the document for printing. It seems to display and function as a normal pdf file but I can't edit it.

Any suggestions welcome.

William

[Amal.]

Hi @William276192849nda 

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.

If it's a file-specific issue please share the file with us for testing https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/sharing-pdfs.html

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 22.3.20282 (Win)  installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Regards

Amal

[William276192849nda]

Thanks for responding, Amal!

My computer is an Apple Air M1 with current MacOS version 13.0.1(22A400). I checked my Adobe Acrobat version using About Acrobat, and it is 2022.00320281 (different from the version you supplied but that was for Windows?).

I tried other pdfs and they could be edited without problems so this seems to be specific to the file. I'm not sure how to submit the file for testing. When I go to the site https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/sharing-pdfs.html , I see how to share a file but how do I get it to you/Adobe? Do I set up a "PDF review online", or do you/Adobe have an address?

This file is a book which I had published here in Thailand but I now intend to put it on Amazon/KDP for broader distribution, however it needs a few small but important edits and that's where I ran into this strange editing difficulty.  In addition to not correctly editing individual words, it throws off line spacing and paragraph formatting.

I'm grateful (and desparate) for your help,

William

PS: I wasn't able to find my post and so re-entered the post; now I find this one with your response, but not the second one I re-entered! if you see the second one please ignore it.

[Amal.]

Hi @William276192849nda 

You can upload the PDF file to the document cloud https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/home/ or any other cloud storage and generate the link and share that link with us.

Regards

Amal

[William276192849nda]

The file Mango Season KDP-Amazon.pdf is uploaded to:

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn%3Aaaid%3Asc%3AVA6C2%3A42042651-8c16-4974-bc5f-3e98924967df/?filetyp... 

[Amal.]

Hi @William276192849nda 

I am unable to find the file that you have shared, Would you mind sharing the file again.

Regards

Amal

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

PDFs by nature are an ouput format. They do not handle text the way an authoring program does. It is very common (and necessary) for the code to split up lines of text as necessary to match kerning and position in print and display. You can see how this works by opening your original PDF in Illustrator... you will see several text objects for that line of text.

When you attempt to edit such text in Acrobat, it guesses on how to recombine these broken up text objects so that spot editing can be done, but it's rudimentary at best and can be easily confused by overly spaced out letter spacing, such as yours, making it pretty much impossible. In this case, you MUST go back to the originating document (e.g the ID or Word file) and make changes there and create a new PDF.

So, why the overlap? Hard to say without seeing the file, but a possibility is hat a font substitution has occured, either from when the PDF was created or a previous attempt at editing. e.g. If the original font used in the originating document isn't available or properly embedded, the replacement font may be different enough in spacing and metrics that the "broken type objects" no longer line up and either overlap or have excessive space.

Editing in Acrobat is the wrong route here. You'll need to go back to the original.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

If the file is simple enough, you COULD open it in Illustrator, and if the fonts used are available on your system and none are missing, you can do some editing in there, then save it back as a PDF. It's not the best thing to do normally, but in a pinch, it's possible.