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Known Participant
December 5, 2017
Question

Text reflow only works in one document I've tried

  • December 5, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1969 views

For my horrible vision, I'd like very large, white on black text - and it thus must be reflowed! According to

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/reading-pdfs-reflow-accessibility-features.html

It should be simple. Choose View > Zoom > Reflow.

But of all the PDF documents I've tried (mostly academic papers), only one has actually reflowed. The rest sit there unchanged. In some, the "Reflow" choice gets a checkmark which can be removed by choosing it again, but the document doesn't change. In others the "Reflow" choice appears and can be chosen, but it then unchecks itself and turns gray and inactive. In a few it is grayed out when first displayed.

This is in Reader DC Version 2018.009.20050 (I hate it when one can't just copy and paste that information!) No, I can't justify buying a professional version. Is there some way to reflow _any_ PDF, or are these academic papers somehow "protected" from being read by visually handicapped people as well as by poor and academically unaffiliated people?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Known Participant
December 5, 2017

Received an eMail with "Adobe Community" at the top, not styled in any way as a link, but pointing to:

https://forums.adobe.com/?et=moderation.emailalert.approved

It says:

ご利用ありがとうございます。

このメールは、あなたが投稿した以下の投稿が当社のモデレータによって承認されたため​送信されています。

Which I totally can't read. Following the link goes to the top of the forum site with no explanation. If that means something beyond my post being approved, I'd appreciate a clue in English (sorry!)

My eMail client does not translate things. Maybe once this is posted, my browser will...

Bernd Alheit
Community Expert
December 5, 2017

May be that the documents are scans.

Known Participant
December 5, 2017

No, they are much too small in size, and I can select and copy text from them, and paste it into a normal text editor where it appears correctly and flows properly. I've seen PDF files where copied text pastes as binary gibberish, but that is not the problem here, nor are these the kind where copied text is readable but seems randomly re-arranged on the page. I can find no difference between the one file that flows properly and all the rest that don't flow at all.