I wanted to try the option of "Rely on system fonts only;do not use document fonts" but the tab under which it appears seems to depend on your printer (or driver). I have 2 printers, and neither one has that tab.
I unchecked "Rely on system fonts only;do not use document fonts" in Adobe PDF Settings found under Print and then Properties or printer preferences. Unchecking this when using Adobe PDF as the Printer seemed to work. In other words, the right system font did not appear to be avaible but the document did have an embedded font that worked.
I went to the print -> advanced link and changed the doc to print as an image and that worked for a staff person who was having problems printing pdf files from a particular website. The setting seemed to hold while he was logged in.
Clicking on print, then selecting properties, going back and hitting ok to print works for me - so thanks for that!
Thanks to the person who said just click to print the pdf, then click on properties but just exit once you've clicked on it, then print - it works! Goodness knows why!
My answer was to use Foxit instead of Adobe, or use Foxit PDF Editor to embed the correct Windows fonts into the pdf document that wasn't printing correctly.
It still rears it's ugly head. Adobe Reader 7, 8 & 9 and Windows NT, XP & Vista. I haven't seen a report from a user running Win7 and having the problem yet. That doesn't mean it isn't happening though. We're primarily XP currently. It appears to be an issue with Adobe reader as opposed to the OS, printer, application, etc.
I came across these posts while researching the problem tonight as this is the first time we have seen it.
We are not printing from the web but reports generated with an application that happens to generate it's reports as PDF files. If one is printed and another opened while the first is printing it will (sometimes) cause the file that is currently printing to print gibberish. There are work arounds on the web if you google it. Print as an image is supposed to work. I'll find out Thursday.
Is it 'International Day of the Zombie Post' again already?
I do a lot of PDFs for Print on Demand print services, and one thing they insist on is the font must be an Open Standard basic font that all operating systems have as a base install or the fonts are embedded - some just insist on embedded fonts.
The reason is if the printer doesn't have all the fonts used in the file in it's list of fonts it can't print the file characters correctly. The way around that is to have the fonts embedded in the file itself, as this allows the printer to read and interpret the file and print it properly.
Printing PDF files, text comes out as garbage
Systems are running WinXPsp2.
Acrobat reader 7.0.0 thru 7.0.2, depending on the user.
Most pdf's come from external sources via email, so I have no control that most people are complete morons to use Distiller instead of PDF Writer it seems.
Steps I have done to try to resolve this issue.
Clear temp folders
Update Windows
update Acrobat reader
update print drivers (no, they are not all the same type of printer)
run AV
Run AdAware
add memory. Computers having this problem range from 256M to 1G of ram.
For one user, if she clicks on "print", and then selects "properties", and then goes back and hits "ok" it will print. If she just goes straight to print, it usually has all the text scrambled.
Other users are a hit and miss on if it will print correctly from the same source. Sometimes they print it two or three times and THEN it will print.
Anyone know of the fix?
Anyone know of an alternative to Adobe reader?