Weird characters when pasting text in Word

[tatichan]

Hi,
I wondered if anyone has encoutered this problem:
Sometimes, when I select the text from a PDF (created by a third party) and paste it into Word I get weird characters or just plain lines and dots instead of the text, which I have no problem seeing on screen. I've checked the security options but there's nothing selected. I've tried saving it as a PS and distilling it again, exporting it and saving it as an rtf file (I've tried both Acro 4 and 5 on a Win98 box). Does it have something to do with the way the PDF was created? Did the third party perhaps not embed the fonts? It doesn't happen often or with the same client so I can't easily pinpoint the problem.
Any suggestion will be helpful.
And since we need to do this in order to get a word count of the PDF, does anyone know of any plugin or utility which would let me get a word count directly in Acrobat?

Thanks
Tatichan

 

[bobina]

It sounds like fonts aren't embedded properly. What do you find when you look at Text Attributes?

 

[tatichan]

When I check under File>Document Properties>Fonts it tells me that the fonts and subsets are embedded but I'm not able to edit the text so that may be it. BTW, this is what it looks like when I paste the text into a Word file:
_________ __
_______
_____ ____

Even changing the font in Word does not work.

Tatichan

 

[Ecaboodle]

It will not matter if they have embedded the fonts or not. If you do not have the fonts on your system, then the simbols will not appear correctly. This is the whole point of PDF files. No matter which system you view them on, it should always appear the same. If you can't fix it in 20 call someone who can.

 

[bobina]

Go to your Text Attributes and see if the font name is there or do you get something like "TT012345". I think MatthewA is somewhat correct. It depends on the font. If the font is not licensed for full embedding (editable embeddable) then you won't be able to copy and paste.

Now I am assuming that these are True Type fonts we are talking about. If not, what I just said may not apply.

Trina

 

[tatichan]

What I get in Text Attributes is something like this: MSTT316eafa793.... (it goes on and on) but I'd bet it's Helvetica or Arial. Other fonts in the document give me variations of the same long name. I have no way of checking what fonts were really used to create the text.
What I don't understand is that in the past I was able to copy/paste text in Word without any problems from PDF files I wasn't able to edit. But it must be the font that's not embedded because a particular style (Heading) in the same PDF copies and pastes fine and the text attributes indicate that it's using Times-Bold.
Thanks for the help.

Now I wonder if anyone knows of a plugin for counting words in PDF files.


Tatiachan

 

[spiral123]

I am having the same problem with a pdf im using let me know if you find an answer

 

[spiral123]

I think I found an answer, if you save as a 300dpi jpeg then use paper capture to recreate the pdf it works great with very very few problems. I hope that helps.