Why are random spaces being inserted in text on Acrobat Pro 9?

Question

My apologies if this has been asked & answered before. I did try and search and found some information but I still do not understand the complete picture.
I am a relatively new user to Acrobat and used 7 prior to upgrading to Pro 9 recently.  I am using it for basic functions only at this point, combining multiple word (Microsoft Word 2003) documents from various authors.  Since upgrading to 9 I have come across a few instances where there were random spaces inserted in the PDF document. These spaces are usually between words or in the middle of words and can be just one or two spaces or 10+ spaces.  After doing some research I think I figured out that these spaces occurred after I had used the Touch Up Text tool to fix a small mistake (likely spelling).  After more research I went into the Change Conversion settings option in Word and removed all of the fonts listed in the 'Never Embed' section of the Fonts tab under advanced settings.  This seemed to solve the problem for a while but now it is occurring again.
So, my questions are:
1. Can someone explain to me if my research is correct and using the Touch Up Text tool is what caused the spaces in the first place?
2. What can I do to ensure that this does not continue to happen while still being able to use the Touch Up Text tool occassionally?
3. Is there something I am missing? (Highly likely given my lack of experience with Acrobat!)
I truly appreciate any insight that can be offered. Unfortunately I cannot offer any examples to show you what is happening as I work in a legal environment and I have yet to be able to re-create the issue with something not sensitive.
Kim

Answer 1

There is really nothing like a space in an Acrobat pdf file. Each letter is positioned on the page according to the Acrobat language specification (similar to the postscript language). When you edit a pdf file anything can happen. I've seen changing one letter completely screw several lines of text (except for the fact that a line of text is not a pdf concept either). The best recommendation is to edit the original documents---not the pdf file. Sometimes it cannot be helped. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. There are no workarounds for changes that occur when you edit the text in a pdf file.