Print machine readable text from PDF Creator

[julianl16988173]

Dear community,

Is there any option to print from Adobe Reader or Acrobat pro and send the raw data to the printer so that the text is still machine readable? We have a virtuel printer that goes to an external supplier who wants to read the address inside the files. When we print either to a PDF printer or the virtual printer all the text is not readable? 

I have alread tried different settings but without luck.

Thank you for your help!

Best regards,

Julian 

[Test Screen Name]

There exist printers that can consume PDF files directly. Does your printer have direct PDF printing? Is that what you mean by "raw data"? Because if you send a PDF to a printer that doesn't have PDF printing, nothing good will happen.

[julianl16988173]

Hi! Thanks for your reply. Here is what I mean, I hope a bit more clear:

We have a system that creates a large pdf file with documents for a lot of different people. This pdf file then goes to an external supplier that sorts the documents and send them out via postage. The document is sent via a virtual printer to the supplier. Whenever we print a pdf to the virtual printer it is printed in a way that does not allow to read the adresses from the file. When we send a test file from Microsoft Word it is possible to read from it. Therefore we are looking for a possibility to send the printing job in a way that makes it possible to machine read the text. 

a few test we made showed the following:

- print or save a document from Microsoft Word into a pdf - text ist readable in Adobe Reader (e. g. highlightable). 
- print the file created in step one again from Adobe Reader into a new pdf using Microsoft print  to Pdf or Adobe PDF or any other pdf printer - text is not readable by Adobe reader - the whole file is one big picture - also the file size increases a lot. 

[hammer0909]

You you have to send them data from the PDF file, I'd open the PDF in Acrobat and choose File > Export To and try Microsoft Word, Rich Text, Text, or HTML. You'll need to experiment with the options. Also, have you ensured that the PDF actually contains text? It could be that how the PDF produced rasterized everything. You can do a simple test by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+F and searching for a word in the document. If Acrobat can't find it, it's not text in which case you need to go back to the drawing board.

Is there a reason you don't just send the Word version of the file?

[JR Boulay]

"The document is sent via a virtual printer to the supplier."

Change this step because when a document is printed it is rasterized, that is converted to pixels.

Hence your problem.

If you want to know many other good reasons not to do this, read this document Refrying
PDFs

:
 the 
good,
 the
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 and 
the 
ugly: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A68be905e-5698-4cd4-9a87-61e7...