PDF editing issues

[Combs, Richard]

Shenton, David (DTRN) wrote: 
 
> I have some weird things happening with Adobe Acrobat 6.0 
> when attempting to delete text in a 200 page pdf. I was given 
> an old file to edit and I'm not sure what program the source 
> file came from.
> 
> Using the Touchup Text Tool to delete text nothing happens, 
> but when I click off the page and go back to the edited page 
> the text is deleted.
> Other times I'm unable to edit the text because of font 
> issues, what do fonts have to do with editing text and how 
> can I correct this.

How much "editing" are you trying to do? The Touchup Text Tool has that
name for a reason -- it's intended to fix the one or two little typos
that got by you before PDFing. PDF is an _output_ format, and it's just
not realistic to do much editing of a PDF. 

If you need to change more than a few letters or a word here and there,
explain this to the people who gave you the PDF and tell them the
changes need to be made in the source doc, if it still exists. 

If the source doc isn't available, you may need to take a deep breath
and save the PDF as RTF. Edit the RTF file in Word (this could be
time-consuming; there will probably be formatting issues) and create a
new PDF. 

All that said, the Touchup Text Tool is sometimes painfully slow to
delete even a few characters. Your clicking off the page may just be a
coincidental filling of the delay, or it may trigger the display to
refresh -- or it could be magic! :-)

As for what fonts have to do with editing -- well, you can't insert new
characters in the Palatino font if your PC doesn't have that font and it
isn't embedded in the PDF. The "fix" is to buy and install the missing
font. 

HTH!
Richard


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Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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