Opening a pdf in AI without outlining the texts

[Taron46]

Hi

I have a multiple pages pdf file that i want to open in AI so i can edit texts.

The problem is that when i open the pdf in AI, all fonts are automatically outlined. I do have the font type on my system but it doesn't prevent Ai from outlining all fonts.

Is there a way to "tell" AI not to outline fonts when opening the pdf?

[Monika Gause]

Taron46  schrieb

Is there a way to "tell" AI not to outline fonts when opening the pdf?

No.

Fonts get outlined e.g. when there have been ligatures applied in the text.

But there might be other reasons.

Illustrator is not a general purpose PDF editor. Get the original source file and edit in the original application that created the content.

[Taron46]

Hi!
If i had the original source file i wouldn't have asked the question. 🙂

Thanks anyway!

[rcraighead]

This thread might be useful to you:

Is there a way to convert outlined text back into live text?

[jane-e · Accepted solution]

Do you have Acrobat?

The correct way to edit is in the source document. Second best is in Acrobat—either Pro or Standard.

Illustratror was not designed to be a PDF editor.

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

Edit the document in Acrobat Pro DC. Here's a video about the editing features in Acrobat: http://www.jeffwitchel.net/2015/08/edit-pdfs-like-never-before-in-acrobat-dc/

[jaym85408297]

Ok, it is somewhat less lame than it was.

It sure doesn't like small inline graphics.

Bleagh. No good choices.

[Monika Gause]

jaym85408297  schrieb

It sure doesn't like small inline graphics.

Just like Illustrator.

The only good choice is to get the source document and edit that. And if there are inline graphics in text, then most probably the source document is an InDesign file.

[Gallivant]

This (and other replies on this thread) might not be useful to some people. I often get given PDF's by clients of crude graphics they have created in other programmes like Powerpoint etc. I use those to make better graphics in Illustrator. If I could import these PDF's with editable text it would save me hours of work copying and pasting from Acrobat. It's kinda stupid if Illustrator can only import outlined text! And I certainly don't want to use Powerpoint or Word or whatever my clients use to work on the graphics. That's why I have Illustrator.

[Monika Gause]

Ask them to give you the text as a tet file.

This happens not when importing, but when creating the PDF.

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-ten-commandments-of-pdf.html

[Gallivant]

What I really hate is when a program presumes it knows what's best for me and limits functionality accordingly. I read the sacrosanct 10 commandments of PDF regarding Illustrator importing and I'm still not convinced... at least give the user the choice and let me them with the associated risk regarding colour spaces, unsupported objects, ligatures etc. As for "this happens not when importing, but when creating the PDF", how can this be true if Acrobat recognises the text and allows me to highlight, copy, paste, edit etc and illustrator doesn't. Text in not some sort of unredable fancy PDF object, it's the absolute most basic thing a PDF can contain besides perhaps a rectangle. And what's the point of having an optional "Convert all text to outlines" checkbox in the Flatten Transparency dialog box, if it ignores this and imports as shapes anyway?

[Monika Gause]

You will have to report this to whoever is responsible for PDF.

Illustrator does import whatever it can read from a PDF. But since PDF is not a native file format, often Illustrator cannot read everything.

The thing is: PDF was never meant for exchange. It's a presentation (and output) format. It was meant to show any document from any application exactly in the way the creator designed it. Also because of font licensing, the font foundries insisted to bake fonts into the PDF so that they cannot be extracted. So the way a PDF behaves, has reasons.

[nr48385538]

OK.
Here is a crappy workaround for you.
Select some text in Acrobat and R-clk/Edit text.
Click outsode the text frame you were in and Ctrl-A to select all.
Now change the font, from and then back to the original.
Save this PDF as a copy and open in Illustrator.
You should have the text all in there without outlines now although some formatting may be lost. This is a per page solution so still fairly arduous for a long document.

[marylisr45975243]

Thank you, this is the solution that really worked for me.  I was trying to get a set of graphs exported from PowerBI (I had tried everything I could to get my client's preferred font to get added to PowerBI's very limited font palette, including editing the *.json code, no joy), and opening the pdf in illustrator outlined all the text.  Thank you!

[Guest]

Brilliant. Thank you for this!

[bkepl · Accepted solution]

I've used Inscape to open misbehaving PDFs. Once saved, the PDF will open in Illustrator with no problem. It was a lifesaver for me when I was creating a couple dozen maps from QGIS. Illustrator always opened them as having missing fonts, and I couldn't replace the fonts in Illustrator. When Inscape opens a PDF with missing fonts, you get a message asking if you want to replace missing fonts with the closest-named font. In some cases bold/italic, etc. don't get applied and I couldn't easily do so in inkscape (yes, I got impatient with learning yet another program), but the PDFs I saved from Inkscape and right away in Illustrator with no missing fonts reported.