Unable to edit text in Acrobat 7.0

[R***@adobeforums.com]

I've just recently changed companies, and this is the 2nd place I've worked for in the past few years where Adobe Acrobat 5.0 is still being used on the graphic designer's computer (that's me) rather than 7.0 (which everyone else has) simply because there is no way to edit text in 7.0 Oh, I know the "touch up text-tool" is THERE . . . I know where to find it, but it never works. I've tried (and so have fellow designers I know) many times to resolve printing to Acrobat Distiller to create a PDF. Still, nothing works.

What follows is the message we're getting when a PDF has been created out of Quark 6.1 (WITH ALL FONTS EMBEDDED, and ALL FONTS APPROPRIATELY LICENSED!!):

"All or part of the selection has no available system font. You cannot add or delete text using the currently selected font."

I've even taken the Quark docs in question down to basic Arial and Times New Roman fonts -- still, when my co-worker here (using Acrobat 7.0) tries to perform one basic edit of one word in the PDF, that's the message she gets.

It's simple enough to say that everyone out there using Adobe Acrobat should just go back to the original document to make edits (I've seen LOTS of that type of response in looking through this forum!) -- but that doesn't help at all when you consistently receive PDFs from departments who "lost" the original, or have no idea what program created the PDF to begin with. "Going back to the original document" is NOT a good answer for me.

I fail to understand why version 5.0 allowed us to edit text with such ease, and now it seems impossible with 7.0! It's a concern to me because our I.T. dept. no longer wants my system to have 5.0. and will possibly be removing it from my system soon. Not only that -- why SHOULD all of the users of Acrobat have to suffer with what appears to be an inferior version in regard to this particular issue?

Are there perhaps some other settings I'm missing or not understanding in Quark when creating my PDFs? I would appreciate any help anyone out there can offer (short of "go back to your original document to make edits.") Thanks so much in advance!

[M***@adobeforums.com]

<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/330971.html>

[unknown]

Mark, you always were pretty terse. ;)

Here's the crux of the matter; consider the following list of fonts:

Times New Roman
Times New Roman PSMT
Times New Roman Std

Behind the scenes, these fonts may be identical (they have the same face). However, they are each completely separate fonts:

1. Times New Roman is the TrueType version;
2. Times New Roman PSMT is the Type 1 version; and
3. Times New Roman Std is the OpenType version.

If the PDF was created with #2 and you only have #1, Acrobat will complain with the "no available system font" error.

The techdoc Mark linked to explains how to convert the text from the font you don't have to the one you do. Once the font is changed, you'll be able to edit it.

If "going back to the original document" is not a good answer, perhaps your company needs to revisit its policies about document retention because expecting the PDF to be editable is a broken workflow. You wouldn't expect to see a film director use the DVD release as a starting point for a director's cut, would you?

Nathan

[M***@adobeforums.com]

Mark, you always were pretty terse.




Verbose is less efficient when it's been said before.

[W***@adobeforums.com]

Nathan,

I like the DVD analogy. I am going to have to remember that one for some folks around here! Bill

[M***@adobeforums.com]

Post by R***@adobeforums.com
I've just recently changed companies, and this is the 2nd place I've worked for in the past few years where Adobe Acrobat 5.0 is still being used on the graphic designer's computer (that's me) rather than 7.0 (which everyone else has) simply because there is no way to edit text in 7.0

I wonder if version 8 will be better . . . or worse.

[W***@adobeforums.com]

It was not easy in AA5, but AA7 Pro has about the same features. Whoever told you that text can not be edited probably took the cheap route and bought AA7 Std. They probably can't do forms either.

As far as finding the features you need, that is another issue. They have made some of the menus confusing as they keep changing them. Under the TOOLS>Advanced Editing there is a Text Touchup Tool.

[L***@adobeforums.com]

But I have the same problem, with Acrobat 7 Pro.

When I try to use touch up text tool on my own machine (that created the PDF in the first place) with exactly the same fonts activated as were used to create the same PDF I get the following error:

The font could not be embedded because the font stored on the page and the system font are encoded differently and the encodings could not be resolved.

So, how do I get Acrobat to recognize the fonts that are activated on my machine that were used to create the PDF?

[W***@adobeforums.com]

I am not sure on that one. The first step is to find what the font is and if it has been substituted. Look at the font with ctrl-D.