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Question

Missing text when converting to PDF from Word

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 4, 2021
15 replies
71027 views

When I convert a Microsoft Word document to a PDF (using both Create PDF in the Acrobat tab and File > Save as Adobe PDF) I am missing some of the text in the PDF, such as a paragraph or some of the list items. I've tried deleting the content in Word and pasting it back unformatted, entering a blank line before the missing paragraph, and converting the list into normal style and then applying the list paragraph style. Sometime soem of the content would appear in the PDF and sometimes it would cause neighbouring content to not appear in the PDF. Has anyone encountered this before? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Janette

This topic has been closed for replies.

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VicToria24368188f2xl

Participant

This post was helpful. This month and never before... I have begun getting blank Adobe files which are a result of me choosing a print option Word to Adobe. A couple of times, I accidentally getting things normal. But I cannot remember how. I am a publisher and need this function to work. Any suggestions???

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nwde

Participant

This seems to be related to my issues. I can not export from Word using the Adobe Ribbon, because my choosen font gets dropped and the PDF uses a diffrent one instead. When i click on the options button in the Adobe Ribbon I can not do any type of settings. I only get some information on the Cloud-Service, thats it. (First Screen)

When I use Adobe to create a PDF from a Word-Document the Setting-field is also not clickable. (Second Screen)

(Exporting from Word works using the Microsoft Save As, but i can not find any settings for images etc.)

B

BBAC-ATX

Participant

I just had that same problem. Several paragraphs were missing on Save as Adobe PDF but showed up with I did Print-> PDF

I had text missing above several inline images that were separated from the text by soft returns. Replacing the soft returns with hard returns worked for me.

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scottknitter

Participant

It's really a disastrous glitch with Save As PDF, I've found. I have to Print to Adobe PDF print driver instead, and then the TOC isn't tagged, but as the client doesn't require the tagging, we'll do without it. They do require that text not be missing. Seems like a top-priority thing to fix ASAP but of course is probably not top of mind for Microsoft or Adobe, whosever fault it is. When a thousand-page document has to be PDFed and submitted, random omissions are disastrous. And again I say disastrous!

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EricMS17493142

Known Participant

We still have an open ticket with Adobe technical support on this topic. Yesterday they said to update our Acrobat application which should fix the issue, as they just released a patch the other day (version 2022.001.20085). But of course that did not fix the problem.

We then had users show them on a screenshare session the problem happening on more than one computer in our department. So the ball is back in their court to do further investigating.

On top of that, some of our users are now experiencing a new issue: if they try to save as Adobe PDF from Word 365, the process begins to convert and then Word totally crashes with no message and no PDF being saved. When they relaunch Word, the typical message about an "add-in" having an issue and gives the option to load it or not. We showed this issue to Adobe as well.

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Janette5FF0Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you for the update and your efforts to find a fix. It looks like it may not be advisable to update Adobe.

I've been finding that straight forward documents with just headings, paragraphs and lists do not usually lead to missing text when converted into a PDF. The moment you introduce columns or soft returns, then the issue is almost guaranteed. But even then it's random. I had a document with two images with captions that I used the column feature to have them appear side-by-side and at times the caption text does not appear in the PDF or the heading that follows the images is missing. I've had to resort to using a table to layout the images with their captions and then remove the table tags in the PDF. This of course takes time and slows me down.

I guess we just have to wait and see if they can resolve this issue.

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EricMS17493142

Known Participant

UPDATE:

Adobe has rsponded to my open support ticket with the following information:

Hi Eric,
My name is Saurabh from Acrobat experts team. This case has been advanced to Acrobat experts team. I will be your point of contact for this case.
I have looked and investigated into your issue and found that this is a known bug. The bug reference number is : ADC-4346294. The fix is expected in March-April release of this year. In the meantime, we have a preference change recommendation which fixes the issue.

Open Word
Click on Acrobat ribbon
Click on Preference
Uncheck “Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagging Adobe PDF”
Click on OK

Now the PDF conversion will work as expected.

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Janette5FF0Author

Participating Frequently

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the update and sharing what Adobe suggested.

I've been using the Acrobat ribbon with those settings and getting PDFs with missing text.

Let's hope that the known bug will be fixed when promised.

Janette

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EricMS17493142

Known Participant

Janette:

Oh wow...that's disappointing to hear!

So far today it has fixed every document that we had problems with. It's still a mystery as to what is actually causing this. We first thought it was only on two column layouts with specific section breaks, then soft returns, and then specific methods as to how tables were inserted. But it still happened with random files and if we redid that page to fix the missing text, then the problem would have a ripple effect and make some text later in the document disappear! Very frustrating!

I sure hope they fix it in the next update to Acrobat as the support tech indicated.

I would also like to know how long Adobe needs to make Acrobat 64-bit! Maybe that will be better? Or worse? 😉

L

lisa mariee52797052

Participant

I finally called our IT support and after messing with my Word document for a bit, this is what she suggested doing:

Click on File>Then on Save As>Navigate to where you wish to save the PDF>Click the little Arrow at>Save As Type:>Change Word Document (*.doxs) to PDF (*pdf). Click the Options Button>Tick ‘Create Bookmarks using Headings.

That is it. If you open your PDF using Acrobat Reader the side bar will have a Clickable Table of Contents. Make sure that Bookmarks is enabled>View>Show/Hide>Navigation Panes>Tick Bookmarks. Your PDF will now have a clickable table of ‘Bookmark’ using the various headings.

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EricMS17493142

Known Participant

Unfortunately that is using the Microsoft PDF converter engine which has its own set of problems (which is why we prefer the Adobe PDF driver).

Namely, the MS PDF converter does not pull in any bookmarks from the Word file if those headings are in a table, header or text box. This is a known issue with Microsoft and although they don't call it a bug, they refer to it as a "furture enhancement". LOL

Also, the MS PDF converter will name the PDF file title (shown in the title bar of Acrobat) with whatever is in the Word file's property (File > Info > Properties > Title) field. It will use anything typed there as the PDF title rather than the physical filename of the document (which is what the Adobe PDF driver will use). We need the filename to be carried over no matter what.

Finally, we have seen overall improvement in the integrity of long documents that contain Microsoft 365 cloud fonts, lots of tables and graphics, and special kerning applied. When using the Adobe driver the PDF will be 100% exact reproduction of the Word document. But when we save as PDF using the Microsoft converter, the line spacing (leading) can be slightly different and the entire document may grow to a few more pages since the spacing is greater.

Microsoft just closed my ticket with them concerning these issues as they can't reproduce the problem, or they won't acknowledge it is a bug.

I also have an open ticket with Adobe tech support now regarding the missing text. So hopefully they might be able to figure out a solution.

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Guodong_abr

Participant

I changed acrobat from 2021 to older version.Acrobat_DC_C_2020.013.20074.

Problem solved.

Maybe because the pdf maker of version 2021 had some bugs inside.

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veeras43732735

Participant

This would be a great solution, but Adobe Creative Cloud doesn't let me install an older version of Acrobat DC. Pretty much all other Creative Cloud apps seem to have the option of installing a previous version but not Acrobat DC. I also couldn't find any way to download an older version from Adobe's website.

Since converting the same exact file works fine on my personal laptop, I though I might have a different version of Acrobat installed, but turns out it's the same exact version that I have on my work laptop (21.011.20039). The Word version on my personal laptop is older (version 2108 vs. version 2112). My personal laptop still runs Windows 8, though, wonder if that could make a difference, as Creative Cloud really doesn't like Windows 8 and allows hardly any apps to be installed on that OS. Mysterious altogether.

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Guodong_abr

Participant

As far as I know, it is the problem of lastest version(21.011.20039) of acrobat that caused the losing text when converting word to pdf. It doesn't matter what version of Word or OS you are using.

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EricMS17493142

Known Participant

Same issue within our company and it has been driving us crazy!

We can't use the MS PDF driver (File > Save As > PDF) as it will not carry over any headings that we want to be included in the PDF bookmarks if those headings are in a text box, table, or within the document header. It also limits the quality/compression/color and other output settings that the Adobe PDF driver provides. And printing to a PDF obviously doesn't work for us either since none of the bookmarks, hyperlinks, etc are transferred over. We send 99% of our PDFs to clients electronically so these elements are important to us and we don't have time to manually add them in in our fast-paced work environment.

Our text dropping issue happens (it seems) only with two column documents that contain section breaks or images and captions put into empty 1-column 2-row tables (photos and graphics in the top cell and a caption in the bottom cell). If we remove the section breaks, then the text does not drop out. Or if we text frames instead of tables for the photos/graphics and captions, then the problem also goes away. But we work with tens of thousands of legacy documents that we continually dupe and revise so that is also not practical to redo every time.

I've reported this to Adobe and Microsoft tech support but as you can imagine both sides blame the other. Microsoft said "use our driver -- it is optimized for Office documents..." and Adobe recommends "print to PDF" which as we know does not support the links, bookmarks, etc.

Saving the XML format DOCX files down to DOC may fix the issue as a workaround, but it introduces other issues including differences in kerning with some fonts and other formatting and feature replacements (some shapes and text boxes convert to effects, text effects are removed, SVG graphics get converted to PNG, etc.) We use SVG for all of our Adobe Illustrator graphics since they convert to vector in the PDF and produce much better quality than a raster format like JPG or PNG.

We are using the latest build of both Microsoft 365 and Adobe Acrobat DC.

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Janette5FF0Author

Participating Frequently

I thought I was imagining the lower quality of images (especially logos) when converting to PDF. Interesting that you are finding that as well. On the positive side is that at least we are aware of what is happening and checking the PDF. Imagine those that don't realize it and share incomplete documents. I'm still using the Microsoft 2016 and have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. So, perhaps it is an issue with Adobe. In any case, Let's hope that Microsoft and Adobe take this issue seriously and find a fix.

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EricMS17493142

Known Participant

This is slightly off-topic, but we use SVG instead of JPG and PNG graphics for all of our simple graphics (specifically logos, symbols, smaller infographics, etc.) which is supported in Office 365. In other words, if the native file is already in vector format (as an AI or EPS in Illustrator format for example), we export to SVG and then that stays as vector through the entire conversion process from Word to PDF. Those elements can be scaled up to any size without loss in quality (unless of course there is a photo (bitmap) inside the graphic in which case that will degrade as it gets enlarged). But for simple graphics and client/partner logos, it works great. If you have a lot of these in the document, the resulting Word file will also be much smaller (if those graphics don't contain a lot of text).

In Illustrator, when you export to SVG there are some settings you need to make in order for the compatibility to be seamless:

Use SVG 1.1
Type - Convert to outline (makes a larger file but guarantees the text layout, kerning, fonts, are not messed up if another user does not have the same font)
Image Location: Embed
CSS Properties: Presentation Attributes
Decimal Places: 3 (higher number produces more "nodes" in the curves but results in a larger file size)
Enable "Responsive" checkbox

Unfortunately Word (so far) doesnot support the compressed SVG format.

Previously, we exported to EMF since older versions of Word did not support SVG. Since we changed to these vector formats, clients have noticed the huge improvement with legibility in our graphics when we give them our PDF files.

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Janette5FF0Author

Participating Frequently

Update on this issue. I am still encountering this problem of missing text when converting Word documents into PDF, but have found that removing soft returns helps. When I'm creating a guide on how to do something in a list format with a screenshot for the different steps, I use a soft return to add the image followed by a hard return to continue the steps. Using the soft returns, increases the chance of encountering missing text in the PDF. Not using the soft returns means that I have to fix the tagging in the PDF, but at least all of the content is there.

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TCWaldron

Participant

THANK YOU! This EXACTLY fixed my issue. I, too, am making a step-by-step guide and was using soft returns to include the screenshots in the steps. Once I used a hard return to separate the images from the paragraphs, all my text showed up in the PDF conversion. Not sure if the glitch is a fault of Word or Adobe, but hope it gets sorted out soon.

Lew Yedwab, Resideo

Participating Frequently

I have had this problem very frequently for the last couple of years with documents of more than 2-5 pages. Until recently, just making one or two more tries at the PDF made the problem go away. For the last 2 months or so, the problem has stopped going away and now occurs with every PDF I make.

My manager suggested a workaround that works every time, to my surprise. Before making a PDF, I save a copy of the Word document in the old .doc format (as opposed to .docx) and make the PDF from that. Works every time, with all jumps and links intact and working and with PDF bookmarks made correctly.

Really strange.

A

Adrean22734706todu

Participant

The .doc format worked for me too, lost some minor formatting by changing the file type, but this is better than losing content or links in the final .PDF.

Thanks for the work-around! Would be better if the Save-As .PDF tool/plugin worked instead.

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SNRockyMtns

Participant

Having the same issue with a resume. The text was there in the pdf previously and it is now missing a job title in the pdf. Tried everything to fix it in word and re-save. Nothing seems to be working.

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Janette5FF0Author

Participating Frequently

Hi. I've tried a variety of fixes and one that seems to work at times is to enter a blank line in between the text that is missing and the text that follows it. I then minimize the spacing and font that is used in the blank line. Save it and try converting it to PDF again. If nothing works, then you may have to save it by printing to Adobe PDF. This will give you an untagged PDF, which then needs to be tagged. If the resume is not too long and complex, then autotag in Adobe Acrobat will be a good start. You most likely will have to make adjustments to create a PDF that is PDF-UA compliant. Good luck.

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