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New User With Weird Issues

Community Beginner ,
Mar 30, 2022 Mar 30, 2022

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So the title pretty much sums it up. My company has used another software (Nitro Pro, if it matters) for all our pdf management and creation for many years. Recently, I've been put on a project and have been asked to start using Acrobat Pro DC, instead as there are some editing features we need to use which weren't available in the other software. The trouble is that I'm encountering major issues with Adobe not wanting to read information from our pdf files. I frequently encounter points where text on the page has been lost and replaced with unrecognized character boxes and "ghost" form fields which I cannot edit, name, delete, or otherwise manipulate. Even if I get new copies of the forms I'm using, when I combine them with other forms to create the combined packets we need, I'm encountering that same loss issue.

 

Obviously, all of these forms were created outside of Adobe, and when I open them in other software, everything functions as expected, so my best guess is that Adobe just doesn't want to play nice with the old software (not ideal). While I could go through and re-create the forms created by my company, most (probably 75%) of our forms are created by government agencies and we (obviously) have to use them as written, so re-creation is not an opton there. 

 

Please see attached a screenshot of the same page of one of the files I'm currently working on side by side in Acrobat (on the left) and Nitro (on the right) for an illustration of the character loss I'm talking about. I've also attached a copy of the file itself for reference.

 

At this point, I'm genuinely at a loss and feeling very frustrated with the situation, so any help anyone can offer would be very much appreciated.

 

Owen

GT Independence

TOPICS
Create PDFs , Edit and convert PDFs , General troubleshooting , PDF forms

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Community Expert ,
Mar 30, 2022 Mar 30, 2022

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Some of the Helvetica fonts aren't embedded. That's why the characters are showing up as squares. See how they as  not listed as Embedded Subset?

 

Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 11.04.57 AM.png

 

I ran a PDF fixup on it to embed the font. But it still didn't work. Someone here who has more experience with font embedding may be able to help.

 

Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 11.05.51 AM.png

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 30, 2022 Mar 30, 2022

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Thanks for the response. So I'm trying to find a solution to this and there's not really a quick/easy way to embed the fonts that I'm finding. Is there an alternative I could use? I don't need to interact with the text on the page, so it doesn't matter if it's OCR accessable, I just need the text to stay where it is on the page.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2022 Mar 31, 2022

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Be sure that your Acrobat can "Use local fonts":

 

Capture_279.png

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 04, 2022 Apr 04, 2022

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Thanks for the response. I just checked that setting and it was already on, so it doesn't look like that's the issue. 

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Community Expert ,
Apr 05, 2022 Apr 05, 2022

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Try to "Print as PDF" from Nitro to create a new PDF with fonts correctly embedded.

Then open the old PDF with Acrobat Pro and use the "Replace pages" feature: this will replace the layout only. Form fields, metadata, etc stays untouched.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 05, 2022 Apr 05, 2022

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Here is a link to a related discussion, with some additional suggestions for fixes.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/adobe-acrobat-standard-dc-strange-square-characte...

 

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