Acrobat 8 adds extra characters to the running header

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

I'm using Acrobat 8 Standard on an XP machine with Office 2003. My documents use running headers and footers. Both headers and footers derive their content from the document properties or the heading level. When I create a PDF using Acrobat 8, it's adding extra characters to the running headers. For example:

0BContents
8BSystem Requirements

Updating the field doesn't help. Does anyone have any ideas?

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

A bit more info on the problem. The footers contains fields that reference the document properties. They work fine. The headers have a styleref field that calls Heading 2. I'm guessing the extra characters are some internal reference to the heading.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. We can't use Acrobat 8 unless I can find a fix for this problem.

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

We need a sample document to reproduce. Can you post one?

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

I can if you tell me how to get the Word doc posted.

[William_...@adobeforums.com]

You simply have to post it on a web site. In a company, the IT folks can typically do this for you for a limited amount of time. If you have a separate ISP, those connections typically come with the ability to post to a directory of yours on their system (need FTP to upload). Some ISPs require the web to be setup (maybe an additional fee for setting it up). Not a good answer, but it is the process.

If you at a company, try asking your IT folks to post it and give you the URL. They will likely appreciate knowing when they can remove it.

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

The IT department around here isn't very helpful. I think I've got it working from the site listed below. It's the only file on the site.

I've done some more testing and other fields worked in the header so it does seem to be specific to the styleref field. Unfortunately that's what we use for all our docs here and the bug has turned up in every file I've tested.

<http://home.comcast.net/~callieann48103/index.html>

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

I forgot to mention that it also related to PDFMaker. Printing to PDF worked fine. Again, we really need PDFMaker because of the features it provides.

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

hmm, looks like a bug. When you un-check the option to generate bookmarks, the problem doesn't occur.

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

Well, thanks for confirmation Mark.

Now will you actually report this or does this just die here? My boss is not going to be willing to spend money on a tech support call especially since we now have 5 copies of Acrobat 8 that we cannot use.

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

It's been reported.

[Jill_M...@adobeforums.com]

I have just encountered this same problem with the trial version and was going to upgrade to Acrobat Version 8, but cannot until this problem is fixed. Does anyone know how to find out if/when this will be corrected? Thanks.

[CallieA...@adobeforums.com]

No specific date has been given, just sometime this year.

I'm hoping it makes it into the first patch as this is keeping us from upgrading too.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

It has now been one year since this bug has been reported. Many people use Running Headers in their documents and need to generate bookmarks. This issue needs to be solved by Adobe, but they really don't seem to care. This problem is still present in 8.1.1. This is a major issue as it happens on almost every page. Is someone at Adobe going to fix this issue. I work at a large company - how about some support or do we have to go to another company. Someone said that Microsoft now has a free product. If so, I will do my best to convince the company I work for to switch! I reported this issue last year about this time, called Adobe, but they don't seem to care...

Here is a sample from my Chapter 3 Document:

2BService and Features

[Steve...@adobeforums.com]

You can keep the bookmarks in a pdf but you need to uncheck "Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF". See if this clears it up.

You can add the tags to your resulting pdf after the fact in acrobat. They are important to allow pdfs to be read by screen readers.

[Greg_...@adobeforums.com]

Is the extra characters in the header problem fixed in 9.0?

[Mka...@adobeforums.com]

I've Acrobat 8.0 and 9.0 both and it seems that its fixed. I had a few files where this problem was there but they work fine in 9.0.

[DeN...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Mkashif - sounds good!
Now I would like to hear it from an Adobe official... :o)

[CN...@adobeforums.com]

HERE IS THE SOLUTION :-) :-) :-)

First: I have recently moved over to MAC � a great idea that makes me ...

Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3, Word 2007 Professional Service Pack 1 and Acrobat 8.1.2 run only in a virtual machine environment :-)

Very important: I am a GERMAN (!) user. The problem is the german umlaut "�" from the style "�berschrift 1" (engl. "Heading 1").

1. Right click (in the document) on heading with style "�berschrift 1". Select "Style sheet" and than select "Save choice as new fast style sheet". A good new name is "H1" � with no german umlaut.

2. Do (1) in all ranks, e.g. rename "�berschrift 2" to "H2". Do not use "�berschrift 1", "�berschrift 2", � in the whole document!

3. Refresh your table of contents; it works fine!

4. Now you have to change your styleref fields from "�berschrift 1" to "H1" and so on.

5. Convert doc(x) to pdf.

6. Result works fine. Do not deactivate bookmarks option!

@Adobe: Only idiots are �

Greets
CN

PS: I had the inspiration from "Marta Cepek - 1:17pm Feb 11, 08 PST (#45 of 54)"
PPS: Another problem is, that "Oktoberfest" in Munich ends in 3 days ;-)

[Greg_...@adobeforums.com]

I work in Israel and someone told me that this problem is not an international one and this is why Adobe is not aware/acknowledging this issue.

Can people please post where you work so I can get an idea of this problem really is an international one or not?

Thanks!

[David Chinell]

I have the same problem in the USA. We also experience it in our Spain offices. I believe it only happens when you StyleRef to styles with custom names. I.E. if you can live with the built-in heading styles and their default names, you may not experience the problem. -- Bear

[Polly...@adobeforums.com]

I have run a test under the Word 2007 + Acrobat 9 Pro environment. I used customized Word style as a basis to create PDF bookmark. It appears that Acroabt is still inserting irrelevant characters into the running headers.

Unfortunately we cannot modify the customized Word styles into standard Word style names (we are talking about over 50 word styles here). Looks like we would have to stick with Acrobat 7 to avoid this problem :(

[Levis...@adobeforums.com]

I am running Acrobat 8 Prof/word 2007 in German. The problem is still the same.
Some weeks ago I contacted the Adobe Support.
They NEVER heard of this problem, I seems to be new to them.
Finally they did not solve the problem.
Here are their last answers:

Wie meine Kollegen mir mitteilten, tritt der Fehler der Style-Refs >mit
den von Ihnen angehängten Dateien auch bei Acrobat 9 auf. Ein >Upgrade
wäre daher nicht von Vorteil. Allerdings tritt der Fehler wohl nur bei
einigen bestimmten >Style->Ref-Einstellungen auf. Eventuell könnten Sie
die Einstellungen der Style-Refs ändern und >testen, ob der Fehler hier
auch auftritt? Mit freundlichen Grüßen XXXXXX Adobe Technical Support

and later on

uns liegen keine Informationen darüber vor, inwiefern das >Entwickler-Team
versuchen wird, eventuell ein Patch oder in einer >neuen Acrobat-Version
Style-Ref-Funktionen zu übernehmen.

Translated summary:

.. the problem is still the same with Acrobat 9, an update will not solve
the problem it occurs only with some styleref settings change your styleref
settings and test it by yourself

and later on

we have no information, if the developer team will solve the problem by
a patch or in a new Acrobat release.

Our, in my words:
Try it by yourself and don´t contact us again.

[DeN...@adobeforums.com]

A beautiful example of Arrogance and Ignorance walking hand in hand.
-DeNelo

[Steve_...@adobeforums.com]

The workaround for this problem is very simple. Simply close the Word file after the PDF is created without making further edits. This will prevent any extra characters from sneaking in. I have been doing this for several months now and it works fine.

If you do find extra characters from previous conversions, you have to remove them in Word. They can be hard to spot, but if you open the Bookmarks pane in Acrobat Reader you'll see where they are.

Steve

[Amit...@adobeforums.com]

We have done some work in this area and it would be good if you could send the problematic files. Please ensure to remove any confidential information before you do so.

Thanks
Amit
av...@adobe.com

[DeN...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, Amit. Or is it Admit?
Heh heh heh... sorry, I just had to! :o)

[Gary_...@adobeforums.com]

AMIT - I have some information that may help your developers research this issue.

READERS WHO HAVE THIS PROBLEM - See the end of this post for how I cleaned up my Word document when this happened to me. It's easy to do if you know what to search for.

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
I have Acrobat 8 Professional and ran into the type of problem described in the thread: Acrobat adding strange characters to the source document, which also show up in the PDF.

In a Word document, I ran PDFMaker (menu option: Adobe PDF > Convert to Adobe PDF) several times in a row, after making small changes to the Level value for several of the headings and styles I had selected as bookmarks on the Bookmark tab, or to the document styles themselves.

During one of these PDFMaker runs, I clicked Cancel while it was processing because I realized I had made an error in my settings. After it stopped, I made some changes to the settings, then ran PDFMaker again several times, but did not look at the bookmarks in the PDF.

Eventually I noticed some odd number/letter combinations at the beginning of the names of the bookmarks in the PDF. I also found these combinations in the document itself -- the appeared when I reset the paragraph styles and cleared the character formatting.

Once I saw them in the document, I started researching. Eventually I realized that PDFMaker had added them to the document in 1 pt ZWAdobeF font, and that PDFMaker must use the combination of size and style to embed codes that identify bookmarks and headings.

PROBABLE CAUSE OF PROBLEM:
I realized that in normal circumstances, PDFMaker adds these codes to the document, uses them to build the PDF, then strips the codes from the document, and we never see them. Since I had interrupted PDFMaker when I canceled, it failed to remove the codes from the source document. When I ran PDFMaker again, it did not realize that the codes already existed in the document, so it added a second set -- and the original set ended up as part of the bookmark names, because the bookmark names don't use the character styles that hid them in the document.

HOW TO DUPLICATE:
The key to duplicating the problem appears to be canceling the PDFMaker after it has created the bookmark codes. Somewhere in the cycle after canceling, it failed to delete the codes it created.

In case it ends up being significant, I was including only Headings 1-5, Title, Chapter Title, and TOC Heading as bookmarks. Only Title was set at Level 1. Headings 1-5 were set to Level 2-6, Chapter Titles was set at Level 2, and TOC Heading was set a Level 3. When the problem occurred, I believe I also have had "Convert Word Bookmarks" checked but I can't recall for sure when I unchecked that box.

TO CLEAN AN AFFECTED WORD DOCUMENT:
I had to search for and delete all instances where Font Size = 1, and then did a second search for Font Name = ZWAdobeF.

Once I deleted all the orphaned tags, I could re-run PDFMaker on the document with no problems and no more funky bookmarks or wonky headings.

This repair strategy will probably work in other types of documents.

Note: If you have changed the font size or font name since the problem appeared, this strategy won't work. In that case, try spell-checking the source document, which should locate most of the orphaned codes. Another option would be to try and cancel the

--Gary Pavek

[Gary_...@adobeforums.com]

One other thing - I noticed when the document had the orphaned tags, that the "Update Field" context menu option was disabled for the TOC, as was described in this post: <http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3434529.php>

I also should mention that I just tried to duplicate the problem and I couldn't find the magic moment at which to interrupt the process -- it may be due to the fact that I re-ran PDFMaker so many times and made small changes to conversion settings throughout. I forgot to mention that at one point the borders disappeared from the Bookmark checkboxes on the Acrobat PDFMaker window's Bookmarks tab. The checkboxes were still there, and could be checked or unchecked, but the borders were missing.

--Gary Pavek

[Inge_L...@adobeforums.com]

Hi there. I have Acrobat 9.01 Professional. I'm getting that rotten 'extra character' problem in running headers. I've tried most of the suggestions here that I understood, though the file is still really buggered. Does anyone have any advanced news on the problem?
I'm running Vista, and Word 2007 with Acro Pro 9.01. All updates are on.
Chees, Inge.

[Levis...@adobeforums.com]

Hi Inge,

unfortunately there is no Adobe solution for the "extra character problem.
After six months of waiting and research we decided to use alternative products which understand Word 2007 docs, generate bookmarks and do not crash. Try "PDF-T-Maker" (free plugin) and a postscript printer driver to produce ps-files and convert the ps-files by your adobe distiller or an alternative product.

Regards

Levis

[Levis...@adobeforums.com]

fix it?

I think I was successful.
removed all the old and wrong Styleref entries like (STYLEREF=1) and so on and replaced them by the correct value

STYLEREF "Überschrift 1" \* MERGEFORMAT

there are no wrong characters in the pdfs created after that.
I do not know if this is the final solution, but it seem to work.

Levis

[Paul_M...@adobeforums.com]

Happy New Year 2009, and the problem still isn't fixed in Acrobat 9.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Since we know PDFMaker corrupts Word .docx, has anyone tried Nitro PDF or another converter?

[Alan_Mc...@adobeforums.com]

Once the characters are in a document it's hard to remove them without affecting links. With the ZWAdobeF font embedded in the document other systems cannot render the Word file and installing the font elsewhere would cause licensing issues. I've used the following macro to replace instances of the font with something more portable using a character which does not appear onscreen/in print.

Sub killAdobeZWQuick()
Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToPage, Which:=wdGoToNext, Name:="1"
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Font.Name = "ZWAdobeF"
.text = "^?"
.Replacement.text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Dim i As Long: i = 0
Do Until 1 <> 1
' Find the font
Selection.Find.Execute
If Selection.Find.found = True Then
i = i + 1
Selection.Font.Name = "Arial"
Selection.Font.Size = 1
Selection.text = ChrW(Val("&H206F"))
Else
Exit Do
End If
Loop
MsgBox ("Fixed " & CStr(i) & " Characters")
End Sub

The code has no warranty with it or a license, it's an example of what can be done. If you use it you do so at your own risk.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Alan,

For those of us that are macro illiterate, please describe what it does.

Thanks for sharing it with all of us.

-Tom