Following on from a post I wrote a while back on text that was present in the source file, but mysteriously vanished on saving to PDF, here’s a similar incident I encountered with a different resolution.
In this case, again authoring in FrameMake, I was working on a number of reference manuals in the range of 500-800 pages long a piece. All was going well until it came time to publish one of the longer books as a PDF. On checking the generated file to make sure all looked well, I skimmed through quickly. First few pages, fine… next few pages, fine… next few pages, … hang on – what’s that big gap there about?… next few pages, now all the tables are blank!… skip quickly to the end… all that’s left is the header/footer rulings!
Starting over and saving the PDF again gave the same results – in fact, it looked like problems might just be happening earlier and earlier in the document each time.
First port of call was a few “turn it off and back on again”s. First the software, then the whole machine. After a reboot, the same problem kept recurring.
Next stop, fiddling with Acrobat settings, with an occasional reboot for good measure. Still no joy.
A bit of a Google, trying out a few random suggestions, and finally I hit on the solution that worked: delete the font cache (C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT (that’s .DAT – not .dll! Don’t mess with your .dlls or you’ll go blind!)), reboot, save the pdf immediately.
The font cache is regenerated when you reboot, so if the same problem arises again, lather, rinse and repeat.
In the case of the document I was working on, I had to delete the font cache and reboot between every save of the document or text started disappearing again. Depending on the length and complexity of the document you’re working on, your mileage may vary.
Hi
Had the same problem but when saving illustrator files to pdfs – it was white text on a magenta background. I could highlight it on the pdf and see it in the preview but not when I viewed the pdf in Reader. Tried numerous things and in the end deleting the offending text (there wasn’t too much) and created text boxes from scratch then it seemed to work. Had used the same font (white out) on several other files and in several other places on the doc but randomly just a handful of bits disappeared in just a couple of the documents.
Alex