adobe reader - PDF has garbled text when copy pasting - Super User https://superuser.com/questions/137824/pdf-has-garbled-text-when-cop...

Try some screen reader utilities (which works with jpeg, do a print screen and there you go) or here is a
different way. (Just a 'guess', don't bite me for it. I used the first way back then. Hope there are more
convenient ways). – Apache May 5, 2010 at 13:56

Similar question: superuser.com/questions/119393/… – Hugh Allen Mar 1, 2011 at 5:46

I can also confirm this problem with OS X, at least as of 10.8.2. I've spent a bit of time going through the
PDF file structure, but unfortunately I can't see any way to repair the damage. Acrobat Pro's "PreFlight"
does report issues with the file when checking it against the PDF/A standard, and the Inventory report
shows the glyphs being mapped against plainly wrong Unicode characters. I've raised a bug report with
Apple - ID 12655651. I'll report back here if/when I get any updates. – KenD Nov 8, 2012 at 9:48

Mught be helpful superuser.com/a/481510/153937 – Ankit Dec 10, 2012 at 10:27

11 Answers Sorted by: Highest score (default)

Simplest way to get around this is to open the file in a recent version of Google Chrome
with built-in PDF reading plugin. Then you can use Chrome's search feature to find text, and
15 copy-paste works correctly.

I would like to vote up pipitas's comment on Shiki's answer, but I don't have the creds :( The
problem may be custom font encoding, not encryption. In Acrobat, click File -> Properties,
then click the Fonts tab to see encoding, and the Security tab to see whether it's encrypted.

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Apr 8, 2011 at 14:40 community wiki
acatalept

Indeed, custom font encoding was the culprit for me. However, Chrome wasn't the solution. I solved the
problem partially with Ghostscript regenerating a PDF from the PS (I was lucky to have the PS source).
Any character groups to which LaTeX applies ligatures (e.g. ff, c, fi, etc.) don't show up in the copied text
of the PDF, which requires some editing when you copy/paste. – Fuhrmanator Jan 28, 2015 at 19:43

2 Same problem with chrome – JinSnow Dec 5, 2015 at 16:55

2 of 10 1/13/2023, 3:33 PM