When printing PDF, text comes out as strange random characters?

I am having the same problem. The only way I can print the form is to save it to my computer, open it up again and then print it.  It then prints normally. I can't seem to find a solution anywhere and wish that Adobe would fix the problems. I use linux Mint 19 OS and a HP Envy 5055, but it also happened with my old HP printer. HP says it isn't a problem with their printer that it is an Adobe problem

i am HP printer user too, but i never experienced a problem like that, the result fine. i'm using adobe reader x freeware.

cheers

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The solution that worked was going into the advanced printer properties on my HP, in the advanced  section uncheck the enable advanced printing features.

The solution to me having this issue was that instead of printing the pdf from the web, I downloaded the pdf file, opened that downloaded version and printed it. No characters!!

I'm going to try the various methods everyone else has mentioned, but in my situation, it seems to be happening when we print the entire document BUT it doesn't show up on screen, only the printed copy text (the graphics are fine) appears like this:

M[_][_] Ne[_][_]ett ...

And so on and so forth. Now we can print the questionable page on it's own and it's as happy as a clam, but will not work when the entire document is printed. (If you're curious, it's between 12 - 14 ledger size sheets, double-sided). We have two printers (DocuColour 250 and DocuColour 252) that both produce the exact same results when attempting to print. The files come to us as pdfs, and the most that we do is combine them into a single pdf (for bookleting purposes). Up to recently we've been lucky enough that it's been intermittent, but now it seems to be every other pdf.

Any ideas?

I just called xerox as the printer we use is a xerox workcentre. I think what they got me to change actually worked. I did a test print and got no symbols so either it was a lucky print or it worked.

Go to start - devices and printers and right click on the printer in question. Go to printer properties - advanced - printer default - advanced - image options - post-script pass through. Here it should say enabled. Change it to disabled. This will stop the printer from interpretting the information in the PDF (and thus stop it from getting confused and just putting a symbol in where it didn't interpret something correctly).

I hope this helps!

I have a WORKAROUND solution / process . . . .

MY issues with pdf printing have always been assoicated with trying to print to pdf from a website / article.

For whatever reason, I have found if I highlight / COPY the article and PASTE it to a WORD document, it prints into a pdf or on my printer just fine.

SAME information / different outcome.

May not help ALL situations but it helps with most of mine.

Good luck.

I, too, have been having this problem since installing Adobe Reader X.  Here is some additional information about it:

1) thabet's solution isn't it for me.  I still have the PDF open and it keeps doing it.  If I kill all reader processes and then reopen, then it works (for a while).

2) The garbage is not random.  Each character is one more than the correct character: A-->B, 4-->5,  space-->! , etc.

3) I have windows XP SP3, and HP Photosmart C309g printer with the most recent software/drivers that I can find.

Has anyone had any help on the original question?? We are just starting the see the problem of the ramdom pages of strange character printing since we moved to Reader X. All systems having the issue are Dell Win XP sp3 but have had the issue on both HP and Samsung printers.

Hi, this issue was the hardest one I've ever worked on even after replacing PC with a new one which made it clear that it's an end user issue; very active users with loads of work usually open tens of PDFs and print then close(open-print-close-open-print-close), with Adobe PDF uploading to printer takes more time than you think or see in the uploade pop up window so you need to keep the PDF open for a while even after it goes to printer memory!!!

some people modify printing to print as image to solve this issue but this isn't practical with those hard working users who print huge PDFs that will print in Gigas if printed as images.