My current example is the form 1040-X (Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return). The PDF version looks fine, but when I try to open it in LibreOffice, the text overlaps in many places and even goes past the page border. If I try to fill this out and export back to PDF, the overlapped text stays overlapped.
Is there some trick to this or is it just a limitation of LibreOffice?
Thank you!
I found a workaround: Use Adobe Reader to print it to PDF (use “Microsoft Print to PDF” selection), and then open the resultant file in LibreOffice Draw.
Would be nice for the original to look the same in both platforms though.
This behaviour is caused by the lack of fonts used to create the document. When these fonts are not installed on your computer, they are replaced by ones deemed “equivalent” by the OS. The overlap happens because Draw is not a PDF editor. It consider PDFs as collections of graphical shapes without textual significance. As a consequence, no typographical “fixes” are attempted.
The solution are:
You didn’t say what your intended goal was. If it were to fill in the form, then Adobe Reader works absolutely fine, the form can be filled in the and recipient, Internal Revenue Service, will be able to extract the data from the form.
If you are trying to edit the pdf to add extra where it was not intended extra data should be added then it might be ignored or not accepted.
Opening a pdf in Draw might not result in the correct fonts being used, even if they are available or are very similar to one of the 14 standard fonts. In your example, HelveticaNeueLTStd-Bd is rendered in Cooper Black instead of Arial/Liberation Sans on my computer. Possibly tdf#143095.
I could create a new entry in the font substitution list in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Fonts so that HelveticaNeueLTStd-Bd is always replaced by Liberation Sans. See Help Fonts
BTW it looks like an unnecessary complication that the author of the pdf chose Helvetica Neue Lt as the font and then made it bold to make it look like normal Helvetica Neue which would render correctly
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