Acrobat Pro DC

[Kevin5E33]

HELP! I'm a serious rookie here. I have a document that "appears" to have multiple text boxes overlapping one another.  I can't edit the parts of the document I want because they're in the way??
I am REALLY frustrated with this.  I tried exporting as a word document and that only made it worse.  ANYTHING you can offer is greatly appreciated.  I hope it's "allowed" on this forum but I'm attaching the document. (Ideally I'd be fine with a clean word document but if I can make it a functional fill and sign that'd be great too.  Thank you in advance.

[Asim123]

Can you be more specific, what exactly you can't edit? you can't move them? On which page are those boxes?

[gary_sc]

Wow, on page 2, that really is a mess. I've never seen anything like that before. You are correct that there are multiple boxes overlaying each other. If this is the first time you've done PDF editing, this probably seems extra dreadful.

Exactly what do you need edited and where?

[Kevin5E33]

Thank you.  Yes...Page 2 is THE WORST.  I just need a "clean" document that I can edit.  Either with Acrobat or Word.  We're supposed to meet our new tenants tomorrow and I've literally been messing with this ALL day...LOL

[Asim123]

What version of adobe you have? Can you share screenshot because file is looking fine for me.

[Kevin5E33]

Well, now I feel REALLY stupid...I don't know.  I tried to right click and look in properties but it doesn't show?

[gary_sc]

Hi Kevin,

As I was implying, there's NO WAY you'll ever see a "clean document" like you see in Word. This is Acrobat, it's a different animal.

If you are doing small editing, a typo here, a word replacement there, you can do it with what you have. However, if you are hoping/expecting to do radical changes that would cause word-wrap, text going onto the next page, etc. It cannot be done. 

Just as one would not use Excel to write a novel, Acrobat Pro cannot do what you want here.

To compound that, even if you could get a good copy of a Word file out of this, that would destroy the features in the fields and you could not use this as a form at that point.

So I repeat: what changes are you thinking about on page 2?

[Kevin5E33]

Hi Gary,

Actually, aside from a couple of stray characters right about (d) SECURITY DEPOSIT I think I can live with page 2.  It took forever to replace the text for (c) LATE PAYMENT but by golly I finally got it done!
Page 3 (l) SMOKE DETECTORS was my next BIG challenge and that's when I threw in the towel and asked for help here.  I need to rewrite it to say "SMOKE AND CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTORS" as the bold title. Also, the other two (2) instances they're mentioned in the body of that sub-paragraph I need to reword "smoke detection equipment" to say "smoke and carbon monoxide detection" equipment.

[gary_sc]

Hi Kevin,

Boy, this really is a mess. I do not know who made this but it really is a mess. 

One possibilty for you is that SMOKE AND CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTORS is too long to fit in that sentence. You may be able to get by with SMOKE/CO DETECTORS (CO is the chemical equivalent of carbon monoxide). The same as the the latter: "smoke and CO detection" equipment.

However, I'm going to assume that this is a document your company has used for some time? How many copies of this are there out there? You do need to also add some indication (a date??) on this so that if someone is looking at this document you can ask them "does it have such and such date on the top/bottom/wherever. If not, let me send you an updated copy."

I wish I could help you more but this is not a normal document. One suggestion might be to zoom in and see if you can squirm into the text with that.

I almost always end with "Good luck," but this time I really really mean it. Let me know how it works out.

[Kevin5E33]

Thanks Gary.  Yeah, it's a mess.  I downloaded it from some website in the State of Michigan.  You should've seen it before I spent the better part of my day working on it piece by piece...LOL

[gary_sc]

Ummm, just out of curiosity, do you have the legal right to use that and even more important, do you have the legal right to alter that document.

Look, this is no skin off my nose, I'm harmless in this, I just would hate to see you get bit. Admittedly, I do not see any proprietary copyright information nor does it show the creator (Hell, if I created this mess, I would not admit it either.). But I'm sure you get my point.

Oh, one other question: are you also in Michigan? Rental agreements in one state might be worded differently or require different conditions in another state.

Good luck!

[Kevin5E33]

I appreciate the input.  I didn't see any proprietary copyright info either and agree with you, WHO would claim it?... 😉

We own property in Michigan but we're in CA.  That's why I can't just run down to the local office supply store (I may end up doing that in MI) just wanted to have it done ahead of time for the tenants to review before our arrival.  AND, Legal Zoom doesn't do lease agreements (So strange)
Thanks and have a great day!

[gary_sc]

Let me add that the problem appears to be that this document has tight integration of fields and text lines. That coupled with occasional horizontal lines, etc. 

Acrobat has to monitor and lock in all items on a page, it cannot distinguish between lines that are underlined, and other horizontal lines so it just boxes them all as independent items. This does make editing more of a challenge but users must go into any editing in a PDF document as an understanding that Acrobat is NOT a word processor NOR a page layout application. It is an application to print to a digital document. Some Editing is possible but only on a limited bases and in this case it is made even more of a challenge with all of the form fields scattered throughout the document.

[Kevin5E33]

So is there ANY way to "clean up" the mess that is there? Especially on page 2 as you point out.