PDF file has overlapping charactres

[karenc70559526]

I have an enterprise application that generates reports and one option is to export the report to PDF. The resulting PDFs, when viewed in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC sometimes have overlapping characters. Any ideas on what causes this and how to resolve it?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

There are several possibilities here:

(1)     The program that generated the PDF file did not embed the fonts referenced by the text in the PDF file. As such, especially if fonts other than Helvetica, Times, Arial, Courier, etc. are used, the substitution fonts may not be able to adequately emulate the original font.

(2)     In conjunction with (1) above, if the PDF creation software didn't properly generate font information for the non-embedded fonts, the widths and spacings used when substituting fonts may be very “off” from what is visually pleasing or correct.

          - Dov

[arikB831]

Thanks Dov,

Is there an easy fix to view such documents ?

I've downloaded an eBook and it's hard to read it due to this issue.

Can a font change in Adobe Reader help in this case? is there a way to force Adobe Reader to regenerate it properly

? 

[defaultblsz8kk5krsd]

Hi, 

I'm  having problems with letters overlapping when I open a file in Adobe reader. Please is there a fix for that.

Thank you!

[try67]

You need to provide more information, and possibly a sample file.

[defaultblsz8kk5krsd]

Hi, 

Here is a sample image. All the users is the company show overlapping letters when opened with Adobe. When they open the file in Edge it shows fine.

Let me know what kind of information you will need.

Thanks!

[try67]

Please share the actual file with us.

[defaultblsz8kk5krsd]

Here you go.

Please see some of the letters are overlapped

Thanks!

[try67]

This is how Excel created it. If you have the original file try converting it to PDF using the PDFMaker plugin of Acrobat, instead of using Excel's internal function.

[defaultblsz8kk5krsd]

Hi, 

Can you show me how to convert it using the Acrobat PDF plug in?

Thanks!

[try67]

Open the Acrobat ribbon in Excel and click on Create PDF.

[Monika5C04]

Hello,

I just wanted to ask you if converting the file to PDF with Acrobat PDFmaker add-in worked for you(?) - were you able to produce a PDF without any overlapping characters?

I'm having a similar issue when exporting / creating PDF from .docx 

I have fonts embedded in "preferences" & I'm using the addin but I have no idea why this is happening (some characters are overlapping, some spaces between characters are not displayed properly). The doc is pretty long (150+ pages) and this issue occurs only in some parts of the document (Arial font used).

Maybe anyone else could have a clue?

Thanks in advance!

[Monika5C04]

Ok, please ignore my question above. I think I just had to describe my problem ("say it outloud") to find the solution. I played with Acrobat PDFMaker settings and now everything works fine. 🙂

Maybe disabling/enabling the addin helped. I don't know. I'm just glad that it works. 🙂

[Monika5C04]

Hello

Does anyone still have similar problems? (Some time ago, I wrote the problem was solved, but it turned out that it was not for too long...)

-> I'm still having trouble producing a PDF with Acrobat plugin >> (with all fonts embedded)

-> Funny thing is that the problem didn't exist when someone else used the same file to create PDF (on a different computer).

I attached screenshots to show what many words look like in the PDF I'm creating (using different methods, i.e. Acrobat ribbon, Export, Save as Adobe PDF...)