Images Missing After Saving pdf from MS Word

[Matthew5F96]

I am currently using macOS 10.15.6 with MS Word Version 16.42 and Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Version 2020.012.20048. This issue existed before updating to the current software versions.

I have been having issues with the MS Word save to pdf feature for the last several months. I generate Word documents including images and save them to pdf to share with students.

- If I print the document from Word, there are no errors

- If I save as a pdf from Word, and select Best for electronic distribution, there are no errors

- If I save as a pdf from Word, and select Best for printing, I have errors

- (I usually use the Best for printing option to preserve several fonts and formatting details.)

If I open the newly saved pdf in Acrobat Pro DC, I get the following message: "An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not display the page correctly. Please contact the person who created the PDF document to correct the problem." Several of the graphics do not display properly.

If I open the same pdf in Mac Preview, the document displays fine.

If I open the same pdf in a browser based preview in Canvas LMS, the document displays fine.
The only problem is opening the files in Acrobat Pro DC.

From what I can tell, Word displays the document with no issues and Preview displays the document with no issues. Acrobat Pro DC is the only program that is having issues. I've been making documents like this for years without any issues, and I can't figure out what has changed. Please help!

I've attached a sample Word document and the pdf generated from it.

[ls_rbls]

I downloaded the PDF that you shared and used the Accessibity Checker tool to run an "Accessibility Check" followed by a full report.

The report revealed issues with the structure of the document,  tagging, reading order and alternate text ...to name a few things.

I also ran the Print Production tool --->>> "Preflight" --->>> "PDF fixups" --->>> "Analyze and Fix" and more things were corrected.

To learn how to fix these accessibilty errors I had to read and learn about the following topics: 

• https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/create-verify-pdf-accessibility.html?trackingid=KACNN#LogicalR...
• https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/editing-document-structure-content-tags.html
• https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/touch-reading-order-tool-pdfs.html

So the file has some accessibility issues that can be corrected manually but this is a tedious task if the manual fixes need to be performed on a large document with many pages.

In any case the main issue is on the first page of the document. 

Seems to me like this is a scanned page and it doesn't allow any type of editing.

The logical page structure order actually starts at page 2 because I was able to tag  the elements on that page correctly. And based on the accessibility check report, when I clicked on Help,  this is the guidance that Adobe Helpx suggests: 

LOGICAL READING ORDER
Verify this rule check manually. Make sure that the reading order displayed in the Tags panel coincides with the logical reading order of the document.

See the slide below. The things that I was not able to fix manually are highlighted in red rectangles:

Page 1 doesn't allow me to edit any text  or images using the Edit PDF tool. This was caused by the PDF producing application in macOS, not the PDF Maker add-on in MS Word.

See next slide:

Running the "Scan & OCR" tool to recognize text, for example, it crashes my Acrobat everytime I try to perform this action. Which is weird, but I think is because it contains renderable text (meaning a layer of an image of text that no longer contains searchable text) and it just closes the application.

This sympton  might be revealing the fact you or the prior user of this form was printing to PDF over and over during the editing of the original PDF instead of Saving. So the OCR is not recognizing any text anymore and thus no searcheable text actions can execute. But this is just a personal observation and I may not be explaining this right.

In my opinion, it is actually  better just to export this file to MS Word from Adobe Acrobat back to MS Word (.dcox). And then, I think that it is a lot easier  if you run the built-in accessibility checker in the MS Word program iteself  before you export this document back to a PDF.

NOTE: Running the accessibility checker in MS Word will let you know what are the issues. This will give you an opportunity to correct those issues in MS Word before you perform the export to PDF.

[Matthew5F96]

Thanks for the input! I wrote the initial word document myself from scratch. I also used the Save as pdf option in Word to generate the pdf of the file with the Acrobat add-on in Word.

The equations in the document were typeset using LaTeXiT. This program automatically generates an image of the equation as a pdf that I can copy and paste into the Word document. I have used this program for years to typeset my equations for Word documents. It seems that the equation images are the source of the problem, but there are no issues with them until I save the entire document as a pdf. And if there is a problem with the pdf why would a simpler program like Mac Preview open and display the document with no issues while Acrobat Pro DC can't? 

[Test Screen Name]

You have Acrobat Pro - but you aren't using it to make the PDF. Why not? ... "I also used the Save as pdf option in Word to generate the pdf of the file with the Acrobat add-on in Word." Save as PDF does not use the Acrobat add-on.