When I edit a PDF and save it the text changes to gibberish and I don't know why. Can you help?

[Stuart Mac Protec]

Hi. I hope someone can help me. 

I edited a document some time ago so i can keep using it. It worked absolutly fine and everything was well. I recently wiped and reinstalled the software on my MacBook Pro and since then it doesn work anymore. When I edit the text it appera all bunched up and not speaced properly. Even if i correct the spacing from the tool bar, once it saved and reopened, all the text I edited has turned it unrecogniable gibberish for example my name Stuart Mac will appear as Qrs_pr K_a once saved and reopened. 

Can anyone help me with this please? is therte a setting or somehting that has chnagded sice the re-install?

Thanks 

Stu 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

This is usually due to a text encoding mismatch. My guess is the font you used previously has been replaced with a new one in your new install that has different encoding.

Regardless, this illustrates the danger of trying to use Acrobat as an authoring tool. You should go back to the original document, or failing that (if you don't have it), do something like place the PDF into InDesign or even Illustrator and overlay the changes there, and re-PDF the result.

[Stuart Mac Protec]

Hi.

Thanks for your reply. I do have the original PDF document but not the document it was sourced from. I will try the the illustrator option.

Thanks

Stu

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

If the document is simple enough, you could actually open it in Illustrator and use that going forward as your working file. You will have to reconstruct parts of it, especially the text blocks (as PDF tends to break up text strings), but at least you have a decent guide to rebuild. The extra work now will be worth it in the end.

[Luke Jennings3]

Go to File> Properties> Fonts, all should say embedded or embedded subset. If they don't, try running a preflight fixup to embed the fonts, (Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups). You may need to find and load the fonts, if they are not on your Mac.