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Emily5C0A
New Participant
September 4, 2020
Question

Editing Text bug

  • September 4, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 4338 views

When I try to edit the text in Adobe Pro DC the text will become scattered and letters will randomly disappear in words. Even if I only delete one letter things get all messed up. Does anyone have a fix for this? I have already tried to uninstall and reinstall the program and still no luck. 

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3 replies

ls_rbls
ls_rbls
Community Expert
September 4, 2020

If you can provide a sample of the file that would be helpful , so that we can test or reproduce the issue.

 

I am more inclined to think that from what you're describing , the source document might have certain type of fonts and they weren't embedded, and if the original file also had some special charachters, then it is possible that they weren't subsetted appropriately during the export to PDF. 

 

Also, the source document could've have font typefaces that forbid font embedding.

 

In the case that the source file was produced from a scanned image, then I am inclined to believe that the Scan and OCR is not able to recognize and correct alternate text (if any). And if it doestry to correct alternate text, maybe the only fallback mechanism is to produce ligatures instead of actually recognizing the text.

 

You can test this by trying to copy one of the problematic words that you're describing and paste in Notepad or Wordpad, for example.  If you get a wierd symbol when you paste it, for example,  that's probably a ligature. 

 

If on the other hand, when you select one of those words, and you right-click and select "Copy with Formatting",  then paste it in Notepad,  you may see that the copied textstring will not show the weird symbols.

 

In any case, you may need to run the Accessibility Tool, run a full check , and additionally see if by using the Print Production tool you can also run "Preflight"--->> PDFfixups --->> Analyze and Fix can help with anything.

 

In the worst case scenario, if none of these methods work, Adobe Helpx guidance usually suggests to re-create the file from scratch.   

 

But I may be wrong, and these are just random observations. If  you can share  a sample file that would be helpful.

I
Ibrahim_Account
New Participant
August 13, 2024

I have the same problem. I did not edit from scan. The PDF was sent to me for comments. Instead of using annotation to comment I literally copied from notepad or typed directly my changes and saw the edits as intended on screen when saved. When my colleague opened the document to see recommended changes not only were the edits I made gone but existing text was replaced with random commas and missing text. I cannot see any reason. I've edited in Acrobat DC Professional for years (since firm first acquired) and never seen this occur however we have recently had updates. We also tell our colleagues (as advertised) that you can use the Edit PDF option to quick edit your document for document cleanup - having them go back to Word would make this tool not as useful as advertised.
(I have highlighted in the screenshot areas where text was replaced with commas and missing.)

Thom Parker
Thom Parker
Community Expert
August 13, 2024

Solution:  Don't do that. If you are reviewing a document, use comments. 

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often
    Thom Parker
    Thom Parker
    Community Expert
    September 4, 2020

    Just in general, Acrobat is not a content editing tool. Ideally you should be editing the original document and then converting it to PDF.

     

    But of course, Acrobat does provide some editing tools. Text in a PDF is not like text in a word file. The text in a PDF is not stuctured, so Acrobat displays text runs, or blocks. Adding and deleting characters often changes the flow in the block, resulting in badly formated text. One thing you might try is making the text block boundaries larger. This is not guarenteed to keep the text flow consistent, but it may help. 

    Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often
    ls_rbls
    ls_rbls
    Community Expert
    September 4, 2020

    Are you trying to edit a PDF that was produced from a scanned image with text?

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