Sam And Dave Can 39;t You Find Another Way

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Cookie Grosky

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Aug 3, 2024, 3:25:16 PM8/3/24

to aseselsnig

On about one quarter of the PDFs I need to edit, the "Add Text" button won't assign the cursor to the document. It appears to work and the cursor will hover over the document with the "A", like it's attempting to work, but clicking on the document doesn't allow the text box to activate. No keyboard presses result in a character on the document. I can click anywhere on the document and nothing will work.

The documents I'm working with are technical drawings, probably created in AutoCad and converted to PDF. The most recent one I'm working on is not a scan as Acrobat recognizes the layers, but still cannot add text. All other features seem to work. Acrobat doesn't recognize the text so I have to remove letters and words as if they were images which is fine, but I need to add text to replace what I remove and that's a no-go.

OK. So they are made of the same 'stuff'. Another avenue to explore might be the layering structure. AutoCAD will output to a layered PDF. Some folks would take advantage of the layering to show or hide layers in Acrobat. Others won't use/need this feature at all. An experiment I would do (with doing a 'save-as' first to preserve your original) is to open the Layers Panel on the left and try to flatten the file, assuming it is constructed in layers. Once flattened, try to make an edit to

I would take a look at the Security Tab of your Document Properties dialog (Edit>Preferences on PC, or Acrobat>Preferences on Mac). Make sure the document's security settings are not preventing you from making textual edits.

I would consider upgrading to Pro, but all information I can find from Adobe appears to be a subscription-only option. I cannot subscribe to a monthly program fee. I may get my company to approve a one-time expenditure. Does anyone know if I can purchase an upgrade to Acrobat Pro?

Interesting. I fully accept that I may be missing something obvious, but I've followed every link I could find within Adobe and I don't find any reference to anything that isn't subscription-based. Could you suggest a link to such a program?

I would have never thought to press the "buy" button next to the subscription option in order to unlock the option to buy the non-subscription software. It turns out that Adobe wants to charge me another $200 to upgrade. I think there is no guarantee that this same thing won't happen after the upgrade as well. Since this is a feature that is supposed to work with DC Standard, I think I need to continue pursuing Adobe to repair the software I've already paid for.

Thanks for the reply. Sadly, I convinced my boss to purchase Acrobat DC to do exactly this. I cannot now say to him that the software doesn't work and we need to purchase a different program. If the problem isn't with me, but instead is a failure of the software, I will be looking to Adobe to make this right.

Can you think of anything else I might be doing wrong here? As I mentioned, about three quarters of the documents I work on, I can edit just fine. Then I get these random situations where I simply can't add text. I've tried closing the program and reloading the document. Nothing seems to work. I'm stumped!

Although it may or may not lead to the solution, I would be curious to know some of the details in the File > Properties description Tab. This is where you can often learn how the PDF was made. For example, You may have the design application listed (something like Adobe Illustrator), and the PDF producer (something like Microsoft Office Word 2007, or Adobe PDF Library). Perhaps we can find a pattern or some characteristic in common of the docs that you can not edit.

I have screenshots of the description page of three more documents. The first one will not let me add text. The second and third are documents that I can edit fine. They appear to all be created in the same fashion.

The "Layers" dialogue on DC Standard seems to be very limited. I couldn't find any tools that allowed me to "flatten" the layers. I can see the layers and I can click the eye icon to make them visible or not. Other than that, I don't see many more tools.

But! You mentioned saving a copy so as not to screw up my original and that got me thinking. When selecting "Save As", there's a toggle button that says "reduce file size". I wondered if this would flatten the layers upon saving. It did not. When I open the file, the layer dialogue is still there and the tools are the same. However, the good news is....this re-saved document will allow me to add text! Not sure why it works, but I'm very pleased that it does.

Over the next few days, I will look for other documents that have this flaw and attempt to use this work-around on them and see if it's an actual solution to my problem. I'm still frustrated with Adobe that a feature on my software appears to not work properly, but I can probably live with the solution if it works every time.

I had the same type of issue using Adobe Pro DC (version 2020.009.20067) wherein the Editing tools ('Add Text' specifically) was not working for some .PDF documents, while it worked fine on others. Saving as a "Reduced File Size PDF" unfortunately did NOT work for me, but for some reason, "Save As Other" -> "PDF/E" did. No idea why, or what "PDF/E" even is, except what it says at -x-pdf-a-pdf.html, but I know the "Add Text" functionality suddenly started working properly once I did this, on at least one document in which it previously wouldn't work.

Nothing worked for me either. I exported it to Word, edited it there, and saved it as a PDF again. Security in properties showed everything to be allowed. This is the only time it has happened to me. I will watch out for this specific sender. Maybe he is using some wonky software to create his pdfs.

I know I'm late to the party, but it's possible that the program that created the .pdf will not allow it to be edited in any form. Our law firm's billing software is like that. If I need to label a fee statement as an exhibit for a trial, I cannot simply "add text" to it. Even though there's technically no security on the document, it is still uneditable. My workaround is to simply print to another .pdf (in Windows, choose "Microsoft Print to PDF" in the print dialog box). I can then add text to the "new" .pdf with no problems.

We were already trying to confirm or dis-confirm the authenticity of this when Keith Olbermann's show presented it as a fact we're reporting. At that point we had to either confirm it or repudiate it. We've done our best to do so.

This kind of thing is of course forgeable, but I let it stand because it felt like something Brandon would do. I know this because over the past few years about two dozen people have forwarded me conversations with Brandon ranging from polite enough to the above.

While the message board thread had a number of details off due to the hand-me-down nature of the information, Ace tracked down the original source of the emails, confirmed his identity over the phone and on Facebook, and got the original. I believe this to be real.

I asked the hivemind for help with confirming that the email was genuine. What followed was a primer on spoofing that led to one inescapable conclusion: nothing is 100% guaranteed. However, you can look at email headers and GMail histories and rule out all but extremely sophisticated forgeries.

This is where a second emailer comes in. Around the same time Brandon is alleged to have fired off the email above, he shot off another after receiving a short rant about how Al Borges was bad and should feel bad:

The short of it is that the headers check out but there's no way to be 100% sure unless you know for sure the assumptions below are true. The smoking gun is indeed the back and forth GMail thread, that's just not possible unless fabricated by the recipient which we don't think it is (details on why below).

We have two separate emails that claim to be sent from DB with the same mail server in the header and the same SMTP address. I'm wholly convinced that neither are forged if these are indeed from 2 different people that couldn't have colluded.

We are sick of all the talk, excuses, and most importantly the losses. You throwing Coach Rodriguez under the bus like you have this week was an embarrassment to the University and more importantly a big cheap shot on all of the players from his classes. Would you classify the game today as "big-boy football?" Would you consider Urban Meyer's offense "big-boy football?" Was that poor excuse of a defense today playing "big-boy football?" Not only was this season an embarrassment to this University, but your conduct over this past week puts a further black eye on this season and has no place at Michigan. Michigan is now truly a middle of the road Big Ten team and we have you (not Rich Rodriguez) to thank for that.

With all due respect, please explain to me what was wrong with my original email? Did I say anything that offended you or that wasn't true? All I did was reference points that you used in your media tour last week. When you go out into the public like you did, do you not expect some backlash? To accuse me of drinking is laughable coming from someone in your position. As I have been reading from various writers, I hope you have extreme concern that the 100,000 attendance streak is in real jeopardy. We just want to win and us fans don't necessarily appreciate seeing you on tv and in the newspapers every other day.