Adobe PDF printer 'printing' garbage characters

[LWillmann]

Acrobat Professional v9.5.0 (Acrobat reports there are no updates available)

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I print from various applications and web pages to my 'Adobe PDF' printer to save things as PDF files.

Over the last several months, I have begun to have issues with printing to my Adobe PDF printer. This issue happened twice just yesterday, actually.

I will be looking at a web page, and choose to print it to PDF (a purchase receipt for example). I supply the filename and choose to print, and Acrobat will bring up the newly created PDF and it will have garbage characters in various places.

If I try printing it to PDF again, I get the same results.

However, if I print the item to Microsoft XPS format, it works just fine and all the characters are readable.

I don't know what to do. I saw an article about embedding the fonts, but it appears that all the standard 'web safe fonts' are already set to be embedded in PDF files via distiller (if that is what is actually doing the printing to create the PDF). If I have to choose more fonts to embed into the PDF, it seems to be extremely difficult to determine what fonts are being used by each site or application and choosing them all manually to be embedded in the files.

Surely there has to be a simpler solution to this issue.

[Bill12]

Try changing the Settings to print or press. I suspect the characters you are having problems with are not embedding and you do not have them on your system.

[Bshiffor · Accepted solution]

I too had this annoying issue, usually printing from https sites, although the site address may be coincidental.

What worked for me was:

1. Select Print
2. In the print dialog box, select Adobe PDF and then Preferences.
3. In the Printing Preferences dialog box the tab should be Adobe PDF Settings
4. Uncheck the box next to Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts
5. Select OK

If the box is already unchecked, it might be caused by something similar. This worked so I went no further. I have not yet checked to see if this must be done each time or how to make it default.

[Grummery]

Same issue -I  use "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the printer and it works. Use the "Adobe PDF" printer and get garbage in the page as well as some proper text. Only issue with the "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer is that unlike the "Adpbe PDF" printer, it doesn't display the printed page - you have to go find it and open it.

It would be nice to have the "Adobe PDF" printer available.

The post by Bshiffor might work except that I do not get the dialog box he screen shot. Also using MS Edge, Windows 10, so this issue seems to have propogated.

[Davey283031154lg6]

Use Print, set the "destination" (use see more) to "save as PDF" instead of "adobe PDF". That one drove me crazy for a while. Web pages with junk letters and no searchability. 

[Joyce35266513urcl]

I've been having this issue for a long time.  I kept searching on the internet for help.  NONE of the above things helped.  I tried changing language, keyboard type, etc.  I FOUND what helped me.  I'm just posting in case anyone has this issue, because I finally solved mine.  If you have ESET as a security software, that was my problem.  I would try to save a receipt from Amazon by "printing" in a PDF format.  My keyboard letters would never be correct.  If you go under Setup-Computer Protection (bottom right corner) - Advanced Setup - in upper right corner in search bar - type "keyboard protection" and hit enter - you will be in advanced setup browser protection screen.  There is a button under "secured browser" called Keyboard Protection.  Disable it.  After I did that, my keyboard issues and saving (printing) to a PDF file was solved.  I hope this helps at least some people.

[Rosan36511936ttld]

There is no "printing preferences"  under the Preference tab on my Adobe.