"0B," "2B," etc., appearing in front of header upon export from Word 365

[BarbaraHill]

I have text boxes in Word for document headers and footers. They contain STYLEREF fields, pulling the most recent instance of Heading 1 into each text box. When I export to tagged PDF, each of these headers or footers has extraneous characters at the beginning. For example, the first Heading 1 is "1. Situation." (This is flat text, not autonumbered.) In the PDF it reads "0B1. Situation." A later Heading 1 is "5. Oversight, Coordinating Instructions, & Communications." It becomes "4B5. Oversight, Coordinating Instructions, & Communications" in the PDF. Attached are screen captures of the field in the Word doc and of the result in PDF. I am using Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, Microsoft® Word for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2208 Build 16.0.15601.20676) 64-bit and Adobe Acrobat Pro Version 23.001.20143.0. How can I get rid of these extraneous characters, short of unlinking all the fields and turning them into flat text?

[Andrew_Inner_North]

I have come here with the same problem. I had it years ago and it seemed to go away. Now I'm with another company and it's reappeared. I can find forum posts about it going back nearly 20 years, which is not encouraging. I read about it being because the heading name didn't use exactly the same capitalisation, or that it was all forced to uppercase, and I tried toggling some switches and making sure that I didn't have any unneccessary ones there, all to no avail.

The answer, as usual, is to use PDF X-Change and not Acrobat (i.e. sidestep the issue)

[Andrew_Inner_North]

OK, I've been annoyed enough to do further testing. The style that was having the 0B placed before it in the output was Heading 7, but I had appended "(Appendix)" to it as it's my appendix header, so in the Style list it appears as "Heading 7, (Appendix)". I deleted the amended title so it was back to plain "Heading 7", and on output I didn't get the "0B".

So, based on this single test, I'm going to say that it might be to do with amending the name of a built-in style and using that in a styleref using just one of its titles (I had it just as "Heading 7", and I also tried it using just "(Appendix)": both worked in Word and gave me the correct text, but both had the 0B on PDF output: I did not try using the entire modified heading).

[BarbaraHill]

Thanks, Andrew. I had not done any monkeying around with style names in my document. So your solution would not work in my case. I ended up converting the fields to flat text. This wasn't what I wanted to do, but I couldn't think of anything else.

[Andrew_Inner_North · Accepted solution]

Good to know. Do you know if it had something to do with capitalisation or whatnot? If so it could be that the text in the styleref field needs to *exactly* match the style's name. If this is automatically done by inserting a styleref field then this should be the case though. I've found this out at the end of a tender and we have 30+ documents to PDF: luckily not that many have the appendix section. 

[BarbaraHill]

No, it had nothing to do with capitalization or whatnot. I was simply using the built-in Heading 1 style. I inserted the styleref field by asking to insert a field, choosing styleref from the list in the left side of the dialog, and choosing Heading 1 from the list in the right side of the dialog. I am glad that you found something that worked in your situation.

[jaggedpeak]

I've been having this issue off and on for *years*.

Happened again today. Tried solutions here, no joy.

Problem occurs when I use the Acrobat plugin.

And when I use File > Save as Adobe PDF.

Does not occur when I use File > Print, then select the Adobe PDF printer. BUT, this is not a full-featured PDF, and you can't include bookmarks.

FINALLY ... I just tried File > Save As, and then selected Save as type: "PDF". Then selected Options, and selected Create bookmarks using Headings.

This generated the PDF with clean headings (no 0B,1B,2B,etc.). BUT ... it includes all headings as bookmarks, so then had to remove those manually. But it seems to have worked.

So, to recap:

- Problem occurs with Acrobat > Create PDF

- Problem occurs with File > Save as Adobe PDF

- Does NOT occur with File > Print  (to Adobe PDF printer), but this is not a full-featured PDF, and cannot do bookmarks.

- Does NOT occur with File > Save as (and then select PDF and set Options to include bookmarks), but this creates bookmarks for all headings, so has to be manually pruned if you don't want lower-level headings included. 

[Tariq Ahmad]

Hi @jaggedpeak,

Thanks so much for your detailed summary, and sorry for the troubled experience and delayed response.

 It’s clear you’ve put in the effort to explore every export option, and your observations are spot-on.

The issue with 0B, 1B, etc. appearing in exported PDFs when using Acrobat’s plugin is likely caused by how the plugin processes field codes, hidden bookmarks, or structured tags tied to Word’s heading styles during bookmark generation.

Here’s what we suggest:

1. Try Cleaning Hidden Elements in Word:

• Go to File > Options > Display, and enable “Show hidden text” and “Show bookmarks.”

• Look through headings for any visible gray brackets or text artifacts. These may be internal bookmarks, field codes, or tracking leftovers.

• Delete/retype headings manually in a copy of the document and reassign proper Heading styles (don’t just clear formatting).

2. Try Saving a Clean Copy Without Metadata:

• Save your document as .docx > then save again as a new .docx (not PDF).

• This sometimes breaks hidden links that Acrobat pulls when building bookmarks.

• Then try Acrobat > Create PDF again with “Add bookmarks” enabled.

3. If the issue persists, and clean headings + selective bookmarks are essential, we recommend:

• Use File > Save As > PDF (Microsoft option) to generate clean bookmarks.

• Then use Acrobat Pro’s Bookmarks panel to remove unwanted ones (you can Shift-click and delete in bulk).

Let us know how it works at your end if you haven't found a solution to the problem already. 

Best regards,
Tariq | Adobe Community Team

[Hanna5EAF]

Hi all,

Thank you for the detailed explanation to resolve this issue. I encountered the same problem. In my case, it turned out that I had relabeled Heading 2 to Heading 2, subsection. While the field code still referenced Heading 2 and Word displayed the header correctly, I ran into the 1B, 2B, etc. issue when exporting to PDF using Adobe.

Hopefully, this helps someone else in the future.