Text spacing changes when opening PDF in Illustrator

[Chris_r]

Hi everyone, I am running into an issue when I open a PDF file in Illustrator to make edits. The text spacing in the PDF looks fine, but when I open the PDF in Illustrator I can see that the text has shifted ever so slightly. All of the fonts are present, but the spacing is a bit tighter causing some characters to actually touch the character next to it. I see this more specifically with characters with baseline shift such as TM and R symbols. I am working on a Mac OS 10.14.6, Acrobat DC 2020 and Illustrator 2020. See attached for examples. If anyone has any suggestions on how to hold the text position when opening in Illustrator , I would appreciate your input. Thanks.

[John Mensinger]

Do you know how/where the PDF was originally written?

The only PDF's that will open in Illustrator with 100% reliability are those that originate in Illustrator and are saved with "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" enabled in the Save As dialog. If the PDF in question doesn't meet that description, it's likely the original application's type engine conventions aren't read into Illustrator in a way that preserves the original tracking, kerning, etc. Depending on the origin of the PDF, that may not be the only problem.

[Chris_r]

In some cases the PDF is written locally by us out of Indesign.  In other cases we are reciving the PDFs from outside sources that we cannot be 100% sure of.  Thank you for the insight.  I had a feeling this was likely going to be unpreventable.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Just leaving this here:

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

[Chris_r]

Monika that is a very handy link, thank you for sharing.  Typically I would never dream of editing PDF files in this way,m but circumstances outside of my control have me scrambling in an effort to work around corrections to provided PDF files.