Missing content on PDFs

[John15B9]

I'm an editorial designer who creates page layouts in InDesign and proofs to PDF. Since a recent auto-update of Acrobat some PDFs don't display correctly with areas of missing or distorted content. This is usually type but sometimes colour backgrounds and images disappear too. The good news is that the PDFs are fine when veiwed by my clients. The bad news is that when they send back the proofs with marked up comments I can't see the copy they've corrected. I’m working on a Mac (OS High Sierra 10.13.6) and the PDFs are created from InDesign (2020 15.1.3.302). Any suggestions welcome. Thanks

[Test Screen Name]

Since you believe the problem is related to an update to Acrobat, please share the version of Acrobat. Also please share one PDF which shows this problem (a sample without personal info, since the world will see it). You will need to give an exact description (or screen shot) of what is missing.

[John15B9]

Hi. My version of Acrobat is 20.013.20064. The attached two screenshots show how it should look and the how the PDF looks with areas missing/not displaying. The PDF file thumbnail looks fine BTW. Thanks

[John15B9]

[Luke Jennings3]

I'm going to assume the PDFs look fine when you send them to your clients, but when they are returned, they don't display correctly. If this is the case, your clients might be causing harm to your PDF proofs somehow. Are they using Acrobat or Reader to view and make comments to the PDF? Are they processing the PDF through a workflow? If you don't believe your clients are causing the problems, you could try resetting your Acrobat preferences:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/how-to-reset-acrobat-preference-settings-to-default/td-p/4792...

[John15B9]

Hi Luke. No, they look wrong when I send them but they're fine when they arrive. I don't think there ia anything wrong with PDF file – it's just not displaying correctly on my computer. Thumbnails viewed in the finder folders also look fine. Your suggestion of resetting the preferences is good one so I'll give that a try. Thanks.

[The Accessible Dezinah]

We're finding something similar with PDFs in the newest update of Acrobat:

The content is visible, but no longer accessible by screen readers. Ours is an accessibility issue.

The PDF was fine, and readable by screen readers.

But after changing a tag from <P> to <H2> for example, it's no longer readable by scren reders.

Whole portions of text become unreadable: paragraphs, headings, whatever.

Makes me wonder what Adobe did to the latest upgrade.

[Dave__M]

My initial thought is to know in what program is the customer's markup being done.  I've heard many stories about PDFs being opened in Mac preview, and that leaving the doc in bad shape ultimately.  Are they using Adobe Reader/Acrobat?  A different program?  Have you tried viewing the file on another computer?  Can it be isolated to just your machine?

My best,

Dave

[John15B9]

Hi Dave. Good suggestion. I've just copied a PDF to another Mac and it displays just fine. It's running an older Acrobat DC version 19.010.20099 so the logical conclusion is that it's the new version of the app on my main computer. It was working just fine until Adobe auto-updated it a couple of weeks ago. Thought I'd turned off all Creative Cloud auto-updates but it seems Acrobat works independantly. Definately not a Mac Preview problem by the way. My client in this case are a professional publishing agency who open and mark up PDF proofs properly. John

[The Accessible Dezinah]

Sounds like we have a major bug with the latest Acrobat version...missing content in many ways.

I'll post this in Prerelease.

[Leonard_Rosenthol]

Can someone please post a PDF that demonstrates the problem?  Without an actual PDF we can't attempt to reproduce or diagnose...

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

@Leonard_Rosenthol, the ones we've seen at my shop are proprietary information that we can't share.

I'm keeping a lookout for one that we can send you.

But I can tell that this started happening after the last Acrobat update (early Dec) on both Mac and Windows workstations. And it's inconsistent: PDF views fine on some workstations, has missing content on others.

[RachitJain]

Hi John,

Thank you for sharing the concern here. I would like to see the pdf for checking it on our side. Please share a weblink/cloud link so that we can help you in resolving the issue. Also please share the current version of Acrobat with us. You can check it by Acrobat Pro DC-> About Adobe Acrobat Pro DC -> Version number would be under title "Adobe Acrobat Pro DC".

Along with this, I would suggest you to update to the latest version of Acrobat and confirm if the issue is resolved.

Thanks

Rachit