Preview not showing text in pdf

Question

Level 1

16 points

Preview not showing text in pdf

Hi everyone, I really need some help.

I work as a teacher and get my timetable for the next week via email. Since 3 weeks, Preview, both on macOS and on the iPhone are not able to show the content of the pdf. It seems, like it's not loading the fonts.

I opened up font book and checked for duplicates and even checking every font didn't help. Everything is fine on this side. I downloaded Adobe Reader and It is possible to view the content of the PDF. It is a workaround for the Mac but not satisfying and won't fix the issue on the iPhone.

Documentinfo in Adobe told me the used fonts are "Arial", "Arial, Bold" "Arial, BoldItalic" and "Arial, Italic", all of wich are available on the Mac and are fine according to the check.

I'll add a screenshot, to the left Font Book with "Arial" available, in the Middle the "Preview" version with the Numbers for the lessons and every important information missing, to the right the same file opened with Adobe Reader. Also I'll add a screenshot of a similar file on the iPhone.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), macOS Sierra (10.12), null

Posted on Jan 8, 2017 1:44 PM

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Answer 1

cdhw

Level 4

3,594 points

Jan 9, 2017 12:43 PM in response to Sk1nk

I suspect that the problem is that your file uses PDF v1.7 format. Apple's current PDF renderer does not implement all the features of PDF 1.7. To view it you can install and use Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, which is free from here:

https://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/

To convert PDF 1.7 it to an older version of PDF use the 'Distiller' function in Acrobat Pro.

In some cases, you can install the free Ghostscript application (I use MacPorts for this but there are other methods) and use it to perform the conversion. E.g. in Terminal.app

cdhw$ gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -o output.pdf input.pdf

C.

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Answer 2

Sk1nk Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 12, 2017 2:03 AM in response to Sk1nk

I had to use my old Macbook Air in school which is still on version OS X Yosemite 10.10.5. Interestingly enough, the "old" preview hasn't got any problems with displaying the PDF, I'm able to read the full document.

So I grabbed the iPad of my girlfriend (iPad mini first gen) which still runs on iOS 9.3.5 and it was able to view the PDF as well.

It seems to be a problem with the later iOS / macOS and not something Preview is incapable of.

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Answer 3

Sk1nk Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 9, 2017 12:43 PM in response to cdhw

So basically "there is no solution, use paid software or third party software". Might work for the iMac, but a major step back on the iPhone.

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Answer 4

Jan 12, 2017 4:16 AM in response to Sk1nk

I wonder if you can post one such pdf (if there are no privacy concerns) to dropbox or something and let us test.

It could be a Preview problem, a PDFKit problem or something else.

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