Illustrator area type randomly breaking

Apparently this is an issue that has appeared through the years.

I see this issue with broken text strings often. The PDF text in Illustrator often shows up like it was created with a mediocre OCR program. Sometimes the PDF source file was created from InDesign - sometimes someone created the PDF source file using other applications. I agree - documents where there is a focus on text should be done in a publishing program like InDesign or a dedicated word processor. But when a drawing or illustration has a just a few lines of notes or text associated with it - Illustrator should be more than capable of handling that task.

Easiest fix for me is to just retype the broken lines of text or take a screen shot of the corrupted document and just retype the text portion as it should be in a word editor (such as Windows NOTEPAD). Then delete the related but broken text string segments in Illustrator and create a new text box. Copy & paste the text from NOTEPAD into the new box and format it as you want it.

Importing - exporting, selecting various options, reformatting the original PDF output file is just a lot of extra work that should be unnecesary. Easiest for me to just replace the broken text strings and move on.

TWO EXAMPLES:

1. You can purchase these at a local auto supply store, etc.. (Where the line of text is broken in the word "supply" store, etc.

2. These can be obtained more economically from a localized source. (Where another line of text is broken in the word "localized" source. )

On occassion, a letter or pair of letters is replaced with a Dingbat font symbol, there may an unwanted space between the breaks, or segments of the same line of text overlap one another!

Is the text corrupted? Is the document corruputed? Who has the original file? What version software was this created in? What version of software are you using? Did the person who created the PDF use the option to save to editable file in Illustrator? Who is that person? Where are they? Can they send a fixed version of the PDF?

Some people may have time for all that. As for me - it is far more efficient to just manually replace the corrupt text, save and move on.

The second screen shot is what happens when you open a PDF with no Illustrator Edit Capabilities included; you are not opening an Illustrator file and hence lose all structure and proper editing ability.

A PDF only contains the instructions to create the text in print or on a screen, and particularly with text with kerning applied, it is technically necessary to break words into individual chunks to accurately position items.

Hello @llewellyn09,

Sorry to hear about this experience. I would request you to share a few more details like:

• Exact version of the OS and Illustrator
• Is it acting this way with some specific files? If yes, kindly share the download link to the file here or via DM.

Also, kindly try updating Illustrator to the latest version (26.2.1) and running Illustrator under the root user account and share your observations with us.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Anubhav