PDF exported from Pro: Cannot edit text. Why?

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12-07-2017 10:39 AM
ThomasColson
MVP Frequent Contributor

When export a PDF out of Arc, I can subsequently edit text elements in Acrobat:

The same imported map in Pro -> Export to PDF -> Attempt to edit any text element results in the following:

Is this by design?

24 Replies
MichaelAugust
Occasional Contributor III

This is a pretty terrible bug preventing us from making simple changes in a PDF vs. opening ArcGIS Pro and re-exporting 20 maps at a time, when prior we could just open/edit a PDF and edit text in seconds. Why isn't this higher priority? Does anyone have a workaround at all? This is killing a lot of our workflows

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JeremyWright
Esri Regular Contributor

Michael,

One thing you could try is using the 2.0 beta version of Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud extension (Beta available for download from ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud 2.0.0-beta) - if you export from Pro 2.5 to AIX, then your text should be editable when the AIX is opened in Maps for Creative Cloud/Illustrator.

The existing BUG is still opened as we are still attempting to find a way to retain positional accuracy for text properties and get editability too.  

Regards,

Jeremy W.

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MichaelAugust
Occasional Contributor III

Here we are 3 years later...if there is a PDF ISO standard for office documents, then we should be able to edit PDFs with the standard tools for handling PDFs, like Adobe Acrobat for example.  Every word processing department on the planet will expect to be able to open a pdf and do something as simple as change a figure number or a title block, and this is going to cause major issues for us if/when we switch our entire company (60+ gis "users" in 10+ offices) over to Pro. What that means is that our word processors won't be able to make minor edits to any gis figures in our reports, they will have to send them back thru the GIS dept. They don't have Illustrator, they are not graphic designers, they have the tools designed to manipulate "office" PDFs, for example Adobe Acrobat. I've worked at several consulting companies and thus far they all operate like this, issuing hundreds of reports a week that include gis figures.

I know you guys are working on it, but can you tell me why a PDF exported from Pro doesn't adhere to the same basic PDF standards as say, a PDF exported from Word or Illustrator, or Inkscape? I can export PDFs from all these other programs, and then edit them in Acrobat just fine.  Sorry for the rant - thanks!

LauraBollmann
New Contributor

Has this been fixed yet? Do I need to update my ArcPro?

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HeyHelp_Desk_Guy
New Contributor II

Hey Laura,

Apparently this will be fixed in the next update 2.17

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MichaelAugust
Occasional Contributor III

Hi there - is that version no. above supposed to read 2.7? The latest version of Pro is 2.6.2 right?

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LauraBollmann
New Contributor

We have Arc Pro version 2..6.2 and I believe it is indeed the latest version. We cannot edit a PDF after export where as in ArcMap we can export a PDF and the document in Adobe will allow editing.

Thank you,

Laura Bollmann

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MichaelAugust
Occasional Contributor III

Hi Laura - I was referring to help desk guy's reply above which seems to indicate a fix might be coming?...but I'm confused by "next update 2.17" when my Pro, like yours, is already at 2.6.2.

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HeyHelp_Desk_Guy
New Contributor II

Yes, I meant 2.7

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JeremyWright
Esri Regular Contributor

Hello All!

To provide some clarity in this conversation:

1.  we are aware of this issue.  It's logged as BUG-000111662 

2.  Our developer team was able to determine the root cause of the problem, and provided a fix for this in the current development codebase.

3.  This fix is slated to be available in the next (2.7) release of ArcGIS Pro - it is not yet publicly available unless you are an early adopter/beta user.

Regards,

Jeremy W.