How come printed pdfs from Access don't look right

July 15, 2005 2:05 AM

I'm stumped on an Access/PDF problem. I'm printing a number of 1-page files from an Access report into pdf. The resulting pdf is almost, but not quite, right. If I select text - copy - paste into Notepad or Word from the .pdf, there's only gobbledygook, which means the pdf is effectively unsearchable.

Further, one or two characters on each page show up as an outline box instead of the character (say 8 or /). If I copy and paste the outline box, I actually get the character that should be there. I've tried printing with PDF995 and PDFCreator, both with the same problem, so I don't think it's the printer. Any ideas?

posted by Kevs to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I'll have to admit I've never seen this happen. I just tried it using the Northwinds sample database, generating a one-page pdf, though with CutePDF. Copy and pasted into Word and the text is all there, except all formatting is lost.

Do you get the same results if you print the entire report, rather than just one page? If the answer is yes, my first suggestion would be to try using a different font in your report.

I'm curious about why you're trying to do this. A more direct way to get the text into a Word document is to run the report in Access, then export the results to RTF format.
posted by SteveInMaine at 3:39 AM on July 15, 2005

What font are you using for the report? IIRC, most third-party PDF creators recognize a dozen or so font.

All others are turned into bitmaps.
posted by unixrat at 6:14 AM on July 15, 2005

Oops. Sorry, I missed the "not searchable" part. Anyway, I've tried it with both CutePDF and PDF995 and my single-page document is searchable using acrobat reader.

If it's not the font, maybe it's your version of the reader? I'm using 7.0.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:16 AM on July 15, 2005

I'm using Arial and Garamond in the relevant sections, nothing too strange. I've printed the entire report with the same result.
posted by Kevs at 1:40 PM on July 15, 2005