Text-to-speech fails after one attempt on OSX

Report · Sep 18, 2018

Hello,

When I try use the Speech function on my Macbook (found in accessibility) I'm only able to read the first sentence I highlight. After the first successful use of speech, it just reads as "Processing of this document was cancelled" every time after that, until I restart the application.

This is not an issue with any other program. I have tested on different computer and with different PDFs.

Thank you.

Report · Mar 18, 2020

Same for me with latest Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, so I had to switch to macOS Preview for Text-to-speech for PDFs.

Report · Mar 25, 2020

I have the same problem. Using Preview is a workaround but I need to use some Acrobat features while I'm reading, which means switching back and forth between Acrobat and Preview and that's a pain.

Report · Mar 31, 2020

I think I have found an alternative workaround for this: Go into Preferences > Reading > Reading Order and select 'Infer Reading Order from Document'. Quickly click Cancel when the box comes up saying 'Please wait while the document is being prepared for reading'. If this box appears when you first open the PDF, you can click Cancel then and you won't need to go into Preferences. When I cancel this process, speech seems to work OK. The problem occurs if I choose one of the other Reading Order options, or if I don't click Cancel. Does this work for anyone else? It's still not ideal, but at least it means I can use Acrobat rather than Preview.

Report · Sep 01, 2020

I have a similar problem. I have a keyboard shortcut setup in System Preferences for text-to-speach. If I highlight a paragraph and use the shorcut then it will read it the first time, but when I do it for the second or subsiquent times it just reads out some numbers (possible the page section number). If I quit and restart Acrobat then it will work again, but only once. If I use the built in Read Out Loud menu option then it will only ever read one line.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Build: 15.9.20069.159242 and Build: 20.12.20043.396433

Mac OS 10.13.6

I have uninstalled Acrobat (Adobe cleaner and unistall from within Creative Cloud) and reinstalled from creative cloud and there is no change.

It used to work in my previous versions, now it's driving me crazy.

Scott