How to Fix Adobe PDF Printer Producing Garbled Text and Symbols
Question details
The user experiences missing characters, symbols, and jumbled text when attempting to print documents to PDF using the Adobe PDF printer from Diligent Boards Management.
- Product
- Adobe PDF Printer
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- Printing documents to PDF from a third-party application.
- Observed behavior
- The resulting PDF contains garbled text, incorrect symbols, and missing characters instead of accurately reflecting the original document.
Ensure you have administrator privileges on your computer, as troubleshooting the virtual PDF printer will require modifying system printer settings and reinstalling drivers.
Reinstall the Adobe PDF Printer Manually
Manually reinstalling the Adobe PDF printer ensures the correct drivers and configuration files (like AdobePDF.inf) are actively applied to resolve font and character mapping errors.
A corrupt printer driver or an incorrectly mapped installation file often causes text encoding issues during the PDF generation process.
Open Adobe Acrobat, navigate to the 'Help' menu, and select 'About Acrobat' to note your exact software version.
Open your Windows 'Settings', navigate to 'Devices', then click on 'Printers & scanners'. Find 'Adobe PDF' in the list, select it, and click 'Remove device'.
Click 'Add a printer or scanner', wait for the list to populate, and choose 'The printer that I want isn't listed' to add a local printer manually.
Choose the 'Documents\*.pdf' port and select the Adobe PDF converter driver that corresponds to your specific Acrobat version, ensuring you use the correct AdobePDF.inf file provided in your Acrobat installation folder.
Verify Application Compatibility
Because the issue may be isolated to specific applications like Diligent Boards Management, ensuring the application properly sends font data to the virtual printer is crucial.
Create High-Quality PDFs Without Garbled Text Using WPS Office
Avoid virtual printer compatibility issues and garbled fonts by using WPS Office's built-in PDF creation and editing tools. It handles complex document formatting natively and seamlessly.
- 1. Open Your Document: Launch WPS Office and open your source document, spreadsheet, or presentation.
- 2. Access Export Options: Click on the 'Menu' button in the top-left corner and select 'Export to PDF'.
- 3. Configure PDF Settings: Choose your desired save location, verify the page range, and adjust any quality settings if necessary.
- 4. Generate the PDF: Click the 'Export' button to instantly create a clean, accurate PDF with perfectly rendered text.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my printed PDF show weird symbols instead of standard text?
This usually happens due to font embedding failures or missing fonts in your system. When the PDF printer cannot map the original font to a system font, it substitutes it incorrectly, resulting in garbled text or symbols.
Does the Adobe PDF printer work with all third-party applications?
While widely supported, some specialized applications may have unique rendering engines that conflict with the Adobe PDF virtual printer, leading to formatting limitations or text rendering errors.
How do I ensure fonts are correctly embedded when printing to PDF?
Open the Adobe PDF printer properties from your system settings, navigate to the 'Adobe PDF Settings' tab, and ensure that the option to 'Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts' is unchecked.
