Saving PDF in Preview results in unsearchable File

Hi
I found an archieved discussion (but without a single answer to the question), so I'm reproducing it here again because I have the exact same problem and am hoping for suggestions for a solution:
"If I take any PDF that is searchable (say from the internet or exported in ms-word) open it in Preview.app, and do a "Save as..." the resulting PDF is not searchable (and btw bigger in file size). I can properly cut and paste text from the original, but from the saved PDF the text is corrupted. Is this a known issue?"
Can anyone help with this one plz.? it's really annoying. thnx.

Open the first document in Preview. Select View -> Thumbnails. Drop the second document onto the thumbnail image of the first one, not in the blank space in the thumbnail panel.

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Problem saving pdf from preview

Since upgrading to 10.4.3 I have noticed that preview behaves strangely when re-saving pdf files. If I preview a pdf document and the use the "save" function to make a copy, the copied file is about twice the size of the original, and the Table of Contents data seems to be lost. I've noticed this for files produced from the TeX package, such as are on the physics electronic archives (http://arxiv/org). Any explanation would be appreciated! I realise that I could just save a copy directly, but it is sometimes handy to preview first, and I am a little disturbed to discover that preview appears to be changing pdf files unnecessarily when saving them.
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I can't help you, but I'm having the same problem with version 9.4.1
I have been trying to "save as" some .pdf documents (monthly statements) from a financial institution, but it does not work when I right click on the file, or when I right click on the document. Like you, I click on the "disc" icon, and nothing happens. I was able to save these in August and prior, but not now. It makes no sense.
When I open these documents, they appear in a web window, not in the Reader software, so there is no tool bar showing "file", "edit", "view", etc, like what appearsw in Acrobat. I'm stumped. I posted this several days before you, but no replies yet. I'm not real eager to pay $39 for the adobe help desk just yet.

Can't search for words anymore after saving PDFs in Preview

Hi everyone,
I would love to use Preview for my day-to-day use of previewing PDFs + highlighting + setting annotations. However, once I have saved the pdf with Preview I can not search for words anymore. If I search for one letter only, I would get cryptic hits like "7;%! 2%8%P%8!".
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Hi, thanks for answering quickly, and the heads up on that other thread.
It undoubtedly has to do with the annotations or mark ups (the last, in my case).
In the linked-to thread they end by suggesting that it's because it's has "commenting not allowed" when you see it
using Adobe Reader, File > Properties > Security says Commenting: Not Allowed.
However, some documents with "commenting not allowed set in Adobe Reader I can highlight or annotate fine, without it messing up after saving.
Besides, any document I save as pdf even from Word, will say commenting not allowed in Adobe Reader. So if even my own documents are not highlight- or annotate-able without garbling the text, what documents would these functions be for, then?
I think what somebody mentioned in the other thread about character encodings hold some truth, I see it in documents in Danish with æ ø and å (however, not all!), but not in English-only docs (yet. Have any of you?).
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- Alexander

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When I copy and then paste text from a PDF in Preview into Pages, the resulting text is gibberish symbols. The odd thing is it only happens with some text in the PDF and other PDFs do the same thing.
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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/86630/internet%20use%20decreases%20social%20interaction. pdf
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Saving PDFs from Preview

When creating a PDF in Preview, that your non-Mac business associates will open in Adobe Reader, the resulting document is noted as an 8 1/2 x 11 page size (in Adobe's Document Properties), even when the original document is something else, creating print problems for those trying to print what was originally a large drawing.
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Any way to save a PDF in Preview and retain the original drawing size? There are several settings in Preview's Preferences affecting DPI and scale, and I have tried them all, in different combinations. None seem to affect the resulting page size, which somehow is a property known to Adobe Reader, but seems invisible to Preview.

Are you talking about saving a C or D size dwg?
In this case I had to create a custom size. However, I solved the problem by simply setting the correct paper size in the Preview Print dialog box, before saving as a PDF.
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When I open PDF file in Preview in OS 10.5. (make changes) and save it as PDF again, this pdf file does not display corectly on PC. Fonts are missing. When I save in Acrobat, everything is correct. I looked on the information about saved pdf, and Prewiev inserts some fonts to PDF. Acrobat reader on PC tells me, that some fonts can be removed and pdf may be not dispayed correctly. This problem is only in Leopard, because in Tiger was everything fine. Does anybody know any solution? Thank you.

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I have found a rather annoying work-around: if you manually close the file before re-opening it (Cmd-W), it will honor this "Start on the last viewed page" option and behave like it used to.
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Font embedding problem when re-saving pdfs in Preview

I love the new features in Preview. Especially, being able to reshuffle pages and to be able to add and delete pages to documents, and the improved annotation features.
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I re-saved the document under a different name. On Leopard, and also on a Tiger computer, the document looks fine.
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Anybody else who's had this?

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So this is a very strange problem. When I save a .pdf that I have annotated in Preview, it saves fine and everything continues to display correctly. However, if I then try to copy Chinese characters from the pdf, it pastes gibberish. F'rex:
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遇到的问题 becomes " !"
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No. PDF is the worst possible format to use for any kind of editing.
Have you tried Adobe Reader? Or Skim?
http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/
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Hi Mary ,
Is it happening with any specific user and specific PDF or is the process random?
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You can try repairing the Acrobat.
Launch Acrobat>Navigate to Help>Repair Acrobat Installation
You can try updating the Acrobat in case you are using any of the older versions.
Launch Acrobat>Navigate to Help>Check for Updates.
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I have my scanner set to 300 dpi Color TIFF.
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Interesting about the jpg's not degrading much upon compression. For some reason I have moved to TIFF due to recommendations on quality (?) and to png due to recommendations on bandwidth (?).
Also thanks for 150 px.
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I'm running some quartz filter reduction routines on my largest pdf's (500 MB?!) and in some cases dropping it down to the 150 Average Compression is totally trashing these files. I can't understand what is going on or whether it is only doing it to the images and /why/ it is doing this to the images.
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Try Combine PDFs
<http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.info/Freeware/CombinePDFs.shtml>
I scan at 600 bpi into TIFF, then use Graphics Converter to save with the CCITT 4 compression. I get about 12:1 compression, with no loss of quality. The result is still TIFF, so you don't have to uncompress to use them.

Custom "Save as PDF" directly to a destination folder overwrites previously saved PDF files

Custom "Save as PDF" directly to a destination folder overwrites previously saved PDF files
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Prior to Mountain Lion, pervious versions were never over-written but rather preserved them with new versions having version number suffixes added e.g., untitled.pdf, followed by untitled1.pdf, untitled2.pdf, untitled3.pdf etc.
Does anyone else have this problem?
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The "Save to Web Receipts" bug existed for a long time - here's a MacOSXHints article offering a workaround in 2007. Here's another reference to it in 2009. Your contention that:
Prior to Mountain Lion, pervious [sic] versions were never over-written.
is, I'm afraid, wrong.
Apple fixed (worked around) that bug by using a .pdfworkflow, as I indicated. As I also indicated, this file can't be opened with Automator (or I just don't know how, which is no great surprise ). But it's the answer to your problems.
You can either wait for Apple to fix what is, admittedly, a huge bug in their PDF Services feature, or you can find a way of implementing the same fix they did for your own folders.
I should be doing the same, as I use PDF Services regularly, but I'm too lazy and have had too little success with Automator in general to give it a shot. You may have more success than I did.
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HI,
Try deleting this file.
com.apple.Preview.plist
~/Library/Preferences.
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If that did't help, try deleting this file as well.
com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

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Saving PDF in Preview results in unsearchable File

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