Open PDF with text in expanded form

[Zorojuro]

Hey everyone, 

I want to edit some pdf text in Adobe AI since I can have some more control over the text design, etc than with using Adobe PDF. However, I wasn't the original creator of this pdf and I don't have the font, and unable to find the right font with font matching tools. So I was wondering if instead I can open a pdf doc with the text in expanded form? I know I can't type any text in that case but I can still move letters around that way. If I open the pdf normally in Ai I will get the can't find font error which tells me that the Illustrator is taking in the text as editable text areas or something.

I use Illustrator 2022 on Windows 10.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Create a new AI file

Place the PDF in it, Linked.

Object > Flatten transparency. Check "Outline fonts"

Analyze the result, release groups and masks, edit

You might not be able to edit everything

Some things might vanish from the PDF completely

Color might change

Illustrator is not a general purpose PDF editor.

[Ton Frederiks]

You can also try to find which fonts were used and if you can install them to keep text (more or less) editable.

In Acrobat you can select File > Properties > Fonts to see which fonts were used in the document, and Illustrator might as well report the missing font names on opening.

[Zorojuro]

I actually tried to do that too, but Acrobat doesn't know the fonts. Even if I try to edit text, the font box will display a placeholder value and give me an error that it doesn't know what the actual font is. Illustrator doesn't know either. But since I don't need to actually type a lot I'm able to use the other answer given on this post to copy paste characters around. Thank you for the suggestion though!