About Michael Jahn Expertise Any and all questions related to creating and modifying PDF files for use in prepress and printing environments.
Experience After being a director of a prepress company, I was involved in development and was product manager to several prepress products related to PDF creation, production and submission to high end printing environments.
Organizations PODi, IPA, Acrobat Users Group, (and was technical director of SGAUA - the Scitex Graphic Arts User Association - what we used to call the Floor Top Publishing systems back in the 80's!
Education/Credentials BS in Biomedical communications, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign
Awards and Honors AGFA's PDF Evangelist - was honored to receive, of behalf of AGFA, an award for shipping the 1st PostScript 3 RIP (AGFA Taipan) from Adobe
Past/Present Clients I have been a consultant to many developers. SGAUA (Scitex), 4-Sight, AGFA, Enfocus, Pantone, and currently, ELAN GMK
Adobe Acrobat - Acrobat 5.0 free text has gone transparent.
Expert: Michael Jahn - 5/16/2007
Question QUESTION: Hello. I have been using Acrobat 5.0 on Windows 2k Pro for several years. I have not updated because I haven't needed to. 5.0 does everything I need it to do and perfectly...well, until very recently, anyway, when the "free text tool" started using a transparent grey for the text instead of black. It seem to be an opacity/transparency issue. All other colors are also very faint. I have tried changing the properties to different colors, different fonts, and also with and without fill color, to no avail. Fill colors are also transparent and washed out. Line border has nothing to do with this either (except they are also transparent). I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program, hoping to regain some default setting in the program that might have gotten changed, but that did not help at all. Adobe does not address this issue to any degree of satisfaction in the kb. I very much appreciate any insight into correcting this problem.
ANSWER: Just so I have this straight - (I don't have Acrobat 5) - this "Free Text Tool" - is this a third party plug-in, or part of the normal Adobe Acrobat full version ? Is there any menu that is selectable if you double click over some of this grey text and then right click ? Perhaps there you can change it back to 'black' - perhaps if you right click and then select properties ? If you email me a screen capture of the menu where you select this tool (email me directly at michaelejahn@jahn.com) perhaps i can better understand.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: oops the email I tried to send you bounced...
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
<michaelejahn@jahn.com>:
64.97.139.1 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 RCPT TO:<michaelejahn@jahn.com> User unknown
Giving up on 64.97.139.1.
--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
Dear Mr. Jahn,
I have attached the screen captures as you requested. Then I printed this same document to a *.pdf file and created a free text box in it for you to play with.
I also included a screen shot of the Adobe help file for you.
Thank you for a speedy reply.
Jaime
ANSWER: operator error at my end - michaelejahn@gmail.com is the correct address to send screen captures and PDF files that have this problem !
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QUESTION: I found the solution. (doh!) I updated from Acrobat 5.0 to Acrobat 5.0.5, and that immediately solved the disappearing free text problem.
The clue?
"This update for Adobe Acrobat 5.0 provides additional compatibility and fixes known issues, including support for Microsoft Windows XP and better integration with Microsoft Office XP. If you own Acrobat version 5.0, you should download and install this update." (http://search.techrepublic.com.com/search/Acrobat+5.0.html)
Can you believe...I had downloaded this update in December 2003 and never installed it.
Answer Adobe normally does do a great job fixing bugs as they appear - Adobe often has a working version, then the OS changes or updates and breaks something - happens in a circle - as a developer, we are often chasing our own tails, but sometimes the MicroSofts of the world steps on it!
