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Print to PDF as text
I've been using PDFcreator for years. Just recently, when I print to PDF from Firefox, it has started producing PDFs that do not contain searchable text (ie where the text from the webpage becomes a raster image).
PDFcreator still works properly with all other software (including Chrome). Can anyone recommend a way I can make Firefox start behaving itself?
Thanks!
Opaite Mbohovái (9)
That is odd. The builtin Microsoft Print to PDF works correctly. Does PDFcreator give you features that the builtin does not have?
If you go to "about:config" in your browser and search for "print.printer" you should see a bunch of special PDFcreator settings. If you take a screenshot of those, we can let you know if one of those is likely to fix the problem.
Thanks for getting back to me. The settings from that printer are as follows (too many to fit into a screenshot):
print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_bgcolor false print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_bgimages false print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_duplex 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_edge_bottom 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_edge_left 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_edge_right 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_edge_top 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_evenpages true print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_footercenter print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_footerleft &PT print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_footerright &D print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_headercenter print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_headerleft &T print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_headerright &U print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_in_color true print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_margin_bottom 0.5 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_margin_left 0.5 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_margin_right 0.5 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_margin_top 0.5 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_oddpages true print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_orientation 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_page_delay 50 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_paper_data 9 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_paper_height -1.00 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_paper_name print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_paper_size_unit 1 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_paper_width -1.00 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_resolution 600 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_reversed false print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_scaling 1.00 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_shrink_to_fit true print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_to_file false print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_to_filename print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_unwriteable_margin_bottom 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_unwriteable_margin_left 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_unwriteable_margin_right 0 print.printer_Your_friendly_PDF_creator.print_unwriteable_margin_top 0
Also just tested and, for me, interestingly Microsoft Print to PDF is producing the same problem.
If it's happening on a variety of web pages for both PDF printers, then I have one thing you can try. Does it work if you change "gfx.text.disable-aa" to true in about:config?
Afraid that didn't fix it!
In today's GiveawayOfTheDay offer for novaPDF Lite I did a little test in answering someone else's question that, for the first time, revealed to me a difference between "printing to PDF" using Firefox vs. MS Edge (and Wordpad) which I chose simply as an alternative.
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/novapdf-10-6/
(commenting as "HMarx")
I was surprised to accidentally discover that the PDF files originating from Firefox had no selectable/searchable text and (as of today) were basically just multi-page/linked image files.
I'd sure prefer that Firefox output text-searchable/selectable PDF files.
I just discovered a workaround:
I have Print Edit WE installed as an extension (which currently is greyed out as "cannot be used with this page"... huh, I wonder why...) that on the aforementioned web page at GiveawayOfTheDay works to save it as a PDF file containing selectable/searchable text.
FF75.0 (64-bit), win7P, Acrobat Distiller 9.0.0 (pdf print driver). Hope the devs can fix this issue... My problem of printing text as raster image is not always, mostly it is vector font, I notice the text is sometimes a vector image(not text font). I haven't spent time like, seeing if same web page later prints same. My best workaround is to copy & paste into html editor (ms.word), far from perfect but at least I can copy links etc...
GKW said
Also just tested and, for me, interestingly Microsoft Print to PDF is producing the same problem.
I have the same problem: neither the PDF printer provided by Adobe Acrobat XI (which is already on the system) nor the Microsoft Print to PDF create searchable PDFs.
When I copy the same link into Chrome and do print to PDF, I get a searchable PDF.
I am using FF 76.0.1 on Windows 10.