Copying this PDF gives garbled text
You select the text in a PDF, copy it, paste it — and get an unreadable string of characters from some other writing system. On screen the page looks perfectly correct; it only breaks the moment you copy.
The cause is that the fonts embedded in the PDF are missing the table that maps each glyph to a character code — the ToUnicode CMap. Display only needs "draw this shape", so the page renders correctly without it. Copying needs the character code, and that is where the link is lost. It is common in journal articles, government documents and files produced by older typesetting software.
The characters are not broken. Readable shapes are drawn on the page. That is why reading the pages back as images recovers the text. Changing the font or pasting into a different application will not help — the information was already lost at the moment of copying.
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Check it on your own PDF
The check runs entirely inside your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and no account is needed. See how many pages, and how many tables and figures, can be extracted before you pay.
Example
実際のPDFからコピーした文字列
下は官公庁の資料からコピーした実物です。左が化けたもの、右が復元したものです。左をコピーして、お使いのエディタに貼ってみてください。同じ結果になります。
コピーした結果
ᆅ᪉බඹᅋయ࠾ࡅࡿ᭩㠃つไࠊᢲ༳ࠊᑐ㠃つไࡢぢ┤ࡋࡘ࠸࡚
PDFIntact で取り出した結果
地方公共団体における書面規制、押印、対面規制の見直しについて
お手元の文字列で判定する
コピーした文字列を貼ると、それがこの種類の文字化けかどうかをその場で判定します。PDFを用意しなくても、コピーした結果だけで確かめられます。
The check runs entirely inside this browser. What you paste is never sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does copying from a PDF produce garbled text?
- Because the fonts embedded in the file are missing the table (the ToUnicode CMap) that says which character each glyph shape represents. The page displays correctly, but copying yields different characters. The text is not damaged — only the mapping is missing — so reading the pages as images recovers it.
- Can the text be recovered from a garbled PDF?
- Yes. PDFIntact reads the pages back as images and recovers the text with character recognition. The check runs entirely in your browser before you pay, so you can confirm it works on your file. Nothing is uploaded.
- Will pasting into Word fix it?
- No. The character codes are already lost at the point of copying, so the same corruption appears wherever you paste. Changing fonts does not help either.
- How much does it cost?
- A one-off charge based on page count: $1.50 for 1–10 pages, $2.90 for 11–30, $4.99 for 31–60, $7.90 for 61–100 and $13.90 for 101–200. No account required. The check itself is free.
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