Adobe Reader XI 11.0.07: font size in comments has been reduced to about 5pt with this update

[Orpheus99]

Win7 x64/sp1 with many updates:

For the last few years, I have experienced major font problems with the comments, such as attempting to make a change in a font style causing Reader to lock up for about 3 or 4 minutes.

I allowed the update to 11.0.07 this am and the pdf I was working on, at length yesterday, now has the font size in the numerous comments I created reduced to about 5 pt. I know: that small isn't possible, but that's about what it looks like.

I believe that Adobe's quality control on Reader has been grossly lacking in the comments area. It has been suggested to me that I switch to PDF-XChange.

I will seriously consider it, because, as I open up pdfs from years past that I need to use for the material I'm working on, I see that the font size in all of those comments has been reduced drastically as well.

The only remedy that I can find is to open each comment individually and "Clear formatting."

That will amount to an enormous waste of time.

Please hire someone who is interested in quality control.

[Orpheus99]

I stumbled upon what may or may not be a reliable "fix":

I opened the Comments panel on the Toolbar, and saw all of my comments listed in abbreviated form.

I closed the Comments panel and moved to my first comment and opened it and it and some others in that pdf and one other pdf that I had used to confirm the earlier "tiny comment font" problem, and now the font size is back to normal.

I hope this proves to be of some assistance to anyone who experiences the same problem I had.

[Rohit_Sh]

Changing Font Size from "Commenting" section under Edit->Preferences will work and will effect all comments in PDFs opened in Reader 11.0.7.

[Orpheus99]

Rohit Sh,

Thank you for your interest.

The font size, set as default to Tahoma 10, was the first thing I looked at: That had not been changed, so it was not related to the problem.

[Rohit_Sh]

Changing Font Size again to 10 by toggling it once with update it's value in Registry and will effect comment font.

[Lucas_z]

Hi Rohit Sh,,

Thanks for your answer. I have encountered a similar problem. While the font size of the comment created before the update remains unchanged, that of the comment created after the update reduce to about 5pt.

Then I tried to increase the Font Size from "Commenting" section under Edit->Preferences, the font size of both the old comments and new comments get increased. So, for example, suppose the desired font size is 10pt but the new comment look like 5pt, then when I update its value into 10pt again, nothing happened; when I change its value into 15pt, the old comment become 15pt and the new comment look like around 7-8pt; after this, if I change its value back to 10pt, the old comment would become 10pt as desired but the new comment now would become even smaller than 5pt. In conclusion, I can never make all comment have the consistent font sizes by changing the Font Size from "Commenting" section under Edit->Preferences, as it worked in the earlier version.

Please fix this. Thank you very much.

[pwillener]

See also Hi DPI, Retina display support | Acrobat, Reader

[Orpheus99]

Lucas, have you tried the method--in my OP--that "mysteriously" solved the issue for me: (I'd suggest a clean boot first--I've adopted that approach for any installs or testing/troubleshooting)

Open Reader or dbl-click on a pdf is Reader is your default, and then click on the Comment label in the Toolbar.

That opened the list of all of my highlights and comments and when I opened a sticky-note/comment, the default font size had been restored to normal.

I can only hope that will resolve your issue. I'm using Win7 x64/sp1 w/updates. I don't know what you are using.

[Lucas_z]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your help. But the trick does not work on my reader, maybe it is because I'm using a different OS (mine is OS X). For now in order to create a comment in a normal font size, my "solution" is to keep an empty space with the desired format in my clipboard and paste it every time before I type a new comment (but clearly it is not a good solution). Will tell you if I find out myself or get from Adobe a real solution. Thanks all the same for your suggestion.

Cheers,

[PaisanoRob]

Acrobat XI Pro 11.0.10 in Windows 8 has an issue like that in December 2014.

All space characters in a comment popup box are displayed in a small font, although the other characters are displayed in the font and font size specified in Edit:Preferences.  This makes the text appear to run together, though it really is not.  If you use the arrow key to move the cursor through the text, it becomes very tiny after each space character, then resumes normal size after non-space characters.

The spaces display fine in the Comments List area on the right, and in a generated Summary of Comments.

Selecting all text in the comment and running Clear Formatting does not help.  Changing the font size or font does not help.