Acrobat reader printing garbage characters

Whenever I print using Acrobat reader default characters print as garbage, even when printing using "Print as Image". Print preview looks fine but printer page shows mostly garbage characters. For example, when printing the Sunday Crossword puzzle from the Washington Post the numbers in the gird print fine but the clues and things like Across and Down headers print with garbage characters. This happens regardless of whether the document is printed from the Reader directly or from within a browser. I've used IE8, Firefox and Chrome and get the same result. The same problem exists regardless of which of my 3 printers I use (HP1020, HP Photosmart 8250, Brother MFC-3740W). Same type of problem happens regardless of what pdf file I try to print. Print preview always looks fine. Printing the same files from my other PC comes out with no problem. The problem system is running Windows 7 64-bit and problem only started recently, things used to print fine.

In the meantime you will likely find that the fonts are not embedded or you are not sending them to the printer. Reader has not been called Acrobat Reader since version 5. The name was changed to just Adobe Reader to avoid this confusion. Acrobat is the full product with a $$ value to purchase.

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Reader printing garbage characters

Whenever I print using Acrobat reader default characters print as garbage, even when printing using "Print as Image". Print preview looks fine but printer page shows mostly garbage characters. For example, when printing the Sunday Crossword puzzle from the Washington Post the numbers in the gird print fine but the clues and things like Across and Down headers print with garbage characters. This happens regardless of whether the document is printed from the Reader directly or from within a browser. I've used IE8, Firefox and Chrome and get the same result. The same problem exists regardless of which of my 3 printers I use (HP1020, HP Photosmart 8250, Brother MFC-3740W). Same type of problem happens regardless of what pdf file I try to print. Print preview always looks fine. Printing the same files from my other PC comes out with no problem. The problem system is running Windows 7 64-bit and problem only started recently, things used to print fine.

In the meantime you will likely find that the fonts are not embedded or you are not sending them to the printer. Reader has not been called Acrobat Reader since version 5. The name was changed to just Adobe Reader to avoid this confusion. Acrobat is the full product with a $$ value to purchase.

Acrobat Reader Prints Strange Characters

The Reader prints files in a strange character encoding which looks like nothing - )*&#$@^(%)&%@#?><{::} and characters you cannot find on your keyboard. When printing from other PC's it's working perfectly. It does that with all languages and all PDF files.
Here is a scanned result of the printing:
[URL=http://www.hotshare.net/image/100994-1898931441.html]img041.jpg (377.73 KB)[/URL]
http://www.hotshare.net/image/100994-1898931441.html

busoppreviews: As I have written before - I have a printer connected to PC via USB, there is no network involved, only mechanically moving laptops.
PS Why on earth I can't reply on these forums using Firefox?

Photoshop CS3 printing garbage characters on HP LaserJet 1300

After installing CS3, Photoshop prints garbage characters on my HP LaserJet 1300.
Yes, I have tried printing as ASCII, ASCII85, Binary and JPEG - nothing helps (plus the settings won't stick even after holding down Alt and clicking the Remember button).
The only way to print right now is to choose Save as PDF in the print dialogue, open the PDF in Adobe Reader and print from there.
Any ideas?

tzw - I responded about this on another forum. I talked to technical support at Adobe about this exact issue about 2 months ago - can't print photoshop CS3 on any of my three HP printers. ( I have a HP1200, an HP 2550 and a HP photosmart 7660) (CS2 works fine) They worked with me for about an hour - called me back and worked some more, and then decided to send it up to the programmers (or engineers or whatever) The programmers called me and worked with me for another hour - trying different set-ups etc., but the conclusion by them was that this was a huge problem in that there were a lot of HP printers out there - that they were going to give this their top priority - and that there would be a fix for this soon. (I have yet to see a fix.)

Adobe PDF printer 'printing' garbage characters

Acrobat Professional v9.5.0 (Acrobat reports there are no updates available)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
I print from various applications and web pages to my 'Adobe PDF' printer to save things as PDF files.
Over the last several months, I have begun to have issues with printing to my Adobe PDF printer. This issue happened twice just yesterday, actually.
I will be looking at a web page, and choose to print it to PDF (a purchase receipt for example). I supply the filename and choose to print, and Acrobat will bring up the newly created PDF and it will have garbage characters in various places.
If I try printing it to PDF again, I get the same results.
However, if I print the item to Microsoft XPS format, it works just fine and all the characters are readable.
I don't know what to do. I saw an article about embedding the fonts, but it appears that all the standard 'web safe fonts' are already set to be embedded in PDF files via distiller (if that is what is actually doing the printing to create the PDF). If I have to choose more fonts to embed into the PDF, it seems to be extremely difficult to determine what fonts are being used by each site or application and choosing them all manually to be embedded in the files.
Surely there has to be a simpler solution to this issue.

I too had this annoying issue, usually printing from https sites, although the site address may be coincidental.
What worked for me was:
Select Print
In the print dialog box, select Adobe PDF and then Preferences.
In the Printing Preferences dialog box the tab should be Adobe PDF Settings
Uncheck the box next to Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts
Select OK
If the box is already unchecked, it might be caused by something similar. This worked so I went no further. I have not yet checked to see if this must be done each time or how to make it default.

Printing Garbage Characters

When a particular user prints a certain PDF the first page, which appears to be a form, prints mostly weird characters with some numbers mixed. If I log into the same machine under my login I can print it fine. My guess is that user has some setting set that is causing this issue. Any thoughts?

My issue wasn't just about the first page; most of my pages printed garbage, only a few printed fine.
I started opening the PDF file in Preview and printing from that. I could add blank pages if I wanted a multi-page document to print some blank pages on the back of my 2-sided copies in Preview (Edit - Add blank page). This works great! I've spent months trying to figure this out. I'm running Mac 10.5.8 OS with an updated version of Reader (also printed garbage) and Acrobat Standard 7.0, which is old, but I need it to make one PDF from multiple PDFs.

HP3015 Printing Garbage Characters

We have had 2 HP3015's that all of a sudden will start printing garbage like ASCII characters. Tried reloading drivers. If we put in HP601 machines instead, the machines function fine. Hospital setting.

My issue wasn't just about the first page; most of my pages printed garbage, only a few printed fine.
I started opening the PDF file in Preview and printing from that. I could add blank pages if I wanted a multi-page document to print some blank pages on the back of my 2-sided copies in Preview (Edit - Add blank page). This works great! I've spent months trying to figure this out. I'm running Mac 10.5.8 OS with an updated version of Reader (also printed garbage) and Acrobat Standard 7.0, which is old, but I need it to make one PDF from multiple PDFs.

Acrobat X Prints Strange Characters

In the last week or so I have had two separate instances of folks having trouble printing large documents from Adobe Reader X. Both were printing to HP Printers, one an officejet connected via USB and another a networked LaserJet. The first few pages of the document would print fine but then the rest of the document prints strange characters. A second attempt to print the document generally succeeds, leading us to believe that it may just take some time for the program to "fill out" the file or something. Has anyone else experienced problems like this with Acrobat recently?

Yes I have a computer in our office that is pluged into a HP Laserjet 2015 and it is doing the same thing when printing from pdf's. After some testing I have gotten it to repete the messed up/strange characters. It seems that it will mess up everytime you print and then close out of the file, even tho it has spooled the print, and the printer is not finished printing. But if you leave the file open for the duration of the print, even tho it is spooled, it will print fine without messing up. Still looking into why this is doing this, it does not matter what PCL printer driver that I have tried for it... I have not tried using a PS driver yet.

Problem searching some PDF files in Acrobat Reader – Non-ASCII characters

Acrobat Reader cannot search some .pdf files. I have put an example document up on Scribd here.
Any attempt to search for any word that can be clearly seen to be in the document fails with “No matches were found.”
This example document is NOT a scanned document – words and characters can be selected.
A hex display tool shows that the characters in a PDF document that can be successfully searched are in the ASCII/1252 range (A=0x41, etc).
Copying and pasting characters in the example document to a hex display tool shows that the characters in the document are not in the ASCII range.
For example the letters A to Z in the example document are in the range ‘A’ = 0xDF (decimal 223), ‘B’ = 0xDE (decimal 222), through to ‘Z’ = 0xC6 (decimal 198).
However, characters in these non-ASCII ranges are displayed perfectly by Acrobat Reader, as can be see if the example document is opened.
Therefore, as Acrobat Reader knows what these characters are, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that it should be able to search for and find them.
Tests were performed using Acrobat Reader X v10.1.4.
Can anyone say what this problem is?

Hi Pat, thanks for your reply.
Your reference to the title of that page being 'HARNESSES' indicates that, when you view that document in Adobe Reader, you are seeing 'HARNESSES', not
"ØßÎÒÛÍÍÛÍ". And that the remainder of the document is similarly being displayed in readable English language.
Yes as you say, you can search for 'ß' and get hits on 'A' (to use that as an example) in the example document.
But the need to form a word to be searched for into whatever code mapping this is using (for example having to enter "ØßÎÒÛÍÍ" for HARNESSES - I'm not even sure how that would be entered from a keyboard) doesn't seem to be very convenient.
Its clear the example document is using some code mapping other than ASCII / Windows-1252 (which has 'A' as 0x41). But it is also clear that Adobe Reader knows what that mapping is, and knows to use it, as its displaying (for example) 'A' for the code 0xDF.
So I guess the question is - why isn't Adobe Reader's knowledge of this mapping being extended to its search input?

Acrobat reader printing at runtime

Hi All,
How to call acrobat reader at printing runtime for printing .pdf file?
Thanks,
Message was edited by:
p.v.k.k

Could any one help me?
Thanks

Acrobat-Reader printing creates mystery file.

I am having an issue with Reader and Acrobat on our Enterprise desktop image. Using the same installation source (transformed msi using Adobe tuner) on the Citrix server environments do not have the same issue. (only Reader on Citrix)
Image=
Windows XP SP3
Internet Explorer 6
Reader and Acrobat 9.x (testing with multiple versions of 9.x show it is not version specific)
Here is what you do to recreate the issue.
open any pdf in Reader or Acrobat.
print the file.
The directory the pdf you printed now has a new file. The name of the file differs based on the printer you print to.
Example of file names using 2 seperate printers=
USB brother hl-1440 connected directly to the laptop via usb. "USB001" 0 bytes
Network attached Ricoh printer via Windows 2008 print server. "IP_10.46.152.250" 0 bytes
I used Process Monitor to see what is actually creating the file thinking it might be the print driver.
I am attaching a screen shot. I hope it is readable. The process creating the file is AcroRd32.exe
Date & Time: 3/11/2010 5:04:52 PM
Event Class: File System
Operation: CreateFile
Result: NAME NOT FOUND
Path: D:\documents and settings\son2f\Desktop\IP_10.46.152.250
TID: 5132
Duration: 0.0005615
Desired Access: Generic Read
Disposition: Open
Options: Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Non-Directory File
Attributes: N
ShareMode: None
AllocationSize: n/a
Description: Adobe Reader 9.1
Company: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Name: AcroRd32.exe
Version: 9.1.0.163
Path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe
Command Line: "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" "D:\Documents and Settings\son2f\Desktop\lifeIns.pdf"
PID: 2128
Parent PID: 3544
Session ID: 0
User: MAST_HODC\son2f
Auth ID: 00000000:000186f5
Architecture: 32-bit
Virtualized: n/a
Integrity: n/a
Started: 3/11/2010 4:50:51 PM
Ended: (Running)
Modules: ( I have this info. Dont think it is much help. THere is a lot.)

I have seen this issue often in the large company I work. I don’t have a 100% fix. It seems to be related to users who created and using local IP port printers and not print servers. Because users have no rights to the system32\spool folder to write the temp file, it dumps this junk file on their desktop. Try correctly installing the printers using printservers and not creating local IP ports. An ugly work-around is to make the users system files hidden or create that file extension type (they usually use just one or two printers so the file type is the last 3 characters of the printer. What happens if their desktop gets filled up with the OS max junk limit, I don’t know because it hasn’t happened yet.

Acrobat 10 prints square characters instead of actual characters on paper copies

Hello,
We use Acrobat 10 standard in a Windows 7 64-bit enterprise environment. The printers involved are Xerox copiers using the latest PostScript 3 drivers.
We are currently having an issue where we print a document and on the paper copy, some of the characters are replaced with a square character. The problem occurs when printing a PDF with Acrobat 10. The problem does not occur when printing with Acrobat 9 but we did a company wide upgrade to 10 so 9 is no longer available.
I read elsewhere that one of the solutions was to use Pre-flight to check for issues prior to printing. However, the standard version of Acrobat does not have that feature. I also used the print as an image option, which works, however the quality is severely degraded, even at 600 dpi. I have also tried printing to the Xerox copiers with the PCL drivers and that prints ok but the margins and character sizes are distorted so we need to use PostScipt.
While this problem applies to many of our documents, the most commons ones that have the issue are PDFs that have been edited to include additional pages from another PDF so they are combined into one larger PDF.
The current workaround I have is to save the PDF file as a PS file, then double-click the PS file to have the distiller regenerate the PDF. Afterwards it prints just fine. However, since we have thousands of PDF documents with this potential problem, it is quite counter-productive to have to do this workaround to each document.
Per Adobe support, I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Acrobat 10, I have also tried printing with Adobe Reader 11 and same problem occurs. However, it will print fine with Adobe Reader 9. Updating to the latest version of Acrobat 10 (10.1.5) has had no improvement.
I have included a sample below of what it looks like on paper. Is there a setting in Acrobat 10 standard that I could possibly try that may work for us?

I'm a Windows user, so I may not have this exactly right, but printing to PDF from Print Booklet on Mac is a two-step process -- first you printto Postscript file using the Acrobat 9 ppd, then you distill the file. I think you'll find more details at InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Acrobat’s Adobe PDF Printer Replaced in Snow Leopard

Laserjet Pro 200 M251NW printing Garbage characters multiple pages after just setting up

I am installing the printer for the first time on a Dell Optiplex with Windows 7 32bit, it is about a year old and is working fine with other printers. The printer was working fine through USB on a laptop running windows XP.
Connected the printer to an open USB on the computer and the auto install started running from the printer. It seemed to run OK, I followed all of the prompts, etc. When I said it should print a test page it started printing multiple pages each with a few lines of what I would call garbage text, strange characters, spaces, random letters, etc. It kept printing pages and I had to turn the printer off to get it to stop.
I was thinking that maybe the drivers from the printer were old and not for Windows 7, so I then download the full driver from the HP website and installed that. It said it would uninstall the original driver, which it did, then it installed and again all seemed OK until I printed the test page, and the same thing as above happened. I also tried printing some text from notepad and it went to the print queue then disappeared. It still seemed like a driver problem to me so I manually uninstalled from the start menu program Uninstall for the printer. This time I downloaded the basic driver and installed - still with the same result. I thought maybe it was because the Quick STart from the printer kept loading when the printer was turned on so I turned it off from the menu on the printer, but it still didn't help. I also tried another USB port on the computer with the same result.
Is it possible there is software left from the first install that may not have been for Windows 7 and it needs to be removed manually??
Any help from HP or anyone would be greatly appreciated as I need to get this printer running for our shipping system ASAP.
Thanks,
Rich

I tried all of those things and it is always the same result. Even on the network, printing from the same computer. I was able to print properly from a different computer, to the HP 200 connected to the USB and shared on the original computer - so I then knew the USB was OK.
I was looking online further and found the HP Universal PCL6 driver, and it actually worked! I don't really understand why the proper driver will not work with the printer though. I even created a new user on the computer so all of the programs, etc. would not load, then I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver - still same problem. The computer also has drivers and printer software for Epson printers, so I don't know if that could be causing some type of problem.
It is good that we can at least do basic printing but I really should have the fully functional driver working for the system. Any help from anyone, and hopefully HP monitors these discussions and can help out.
Thanks,
Rich

Force the "Fit To Printable Area" Option in Adobe Acrobat [Reader] Print Dialog

Hi,
I was wondering if there is a way to force Adobe Arcobat Reader to always use the "Fit To Printable Area" Option in the print dialog?
If this is possible, how can I achieve it?
Thanks...

If you only have Reader (that is different from Acrobat, the full product), then your only options would be under the preferences in Reader. If they are not there, then the answer is no. To really get a better idea, ask in the Reader forum. If you have Acrobat, then provide the version to get more specific help.

Acrobat reader print with javascript script

Hello,
I read the documentation for printing silently using javascript, but it does not work as not all COM objects are installed.
A code example:
<body>
<object id="examplePDF" data="DFWCRT133735.PDF" type="application/pdf" title="SamplePdf" width="100%" height="100%">
   Your browser does not support PDF, Please install Adobe Acrobat.
</object>
<div id="pdfprop">
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var pdf = document.getElementById("examplePDF");
    var divProps = document.getElementById("pdfprop");
    if (pdf) {
// Attempt 1: Works, but shown printing dialig which I do not want
//        pdf.print();
// Attempt 2: Does not work. Shows an exception about parameters when printing
        //var printParms = { bUI: false, bSilent: true, bShrinkToFit: true };
        //pdf.print(printParms);
// Attempt 3: Does not work as can't instatiate unexistent progid, class AcroExch.PDDoc. COM object is not registered
        var srcDoc = new ActiveXObject("AcroExch.PDDoc");
        var jsObj = srcDoc.GetJSObject();
        var pp = jsObj.getPrintParams();
        pp.interactive = pp.constants.interactionLevel.automatic;
        pdf.print(pp);
</script>
</body>
I read in google something about the Acrobat Pro version will have the missing COM object, but I can't force all my clients to buy that product. Is it possible with the reader version.
I'll appreciate any help.

I am trying with Reader 9.
I am not trying to print from the server. The printing will happen on the client computers that is why I am trying to print using javascript from an html page. My clients do have different versions of Reader from 6 to latest
Is there any way to achieve it with out installing anything else on the computers?
Thanks,

Acrobat reader printing garbage characters

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