Amy Halim Posted August 2, 2023 Share Posted August 2, 2023 Hi everyone! I have been trying to figure this out and I don't even know what search terms to use in this matter, hoping that sharing this here might help since I can attach images here as well. Referring to the images attached, I created a planner template using the table tool to create the schedule section. After I exported the file as .pdf, I found that certain fields on the table are selected/highlighted? when I hovered the mouse onto it. When I clicked on the drop down arrow at the bottom right of the selection box, it prompted to save the numbers as contact (see Image 2). In case it helps with anything, I do have hyperlinks in the file but the tables are not hyperlinked. I was wondering if someone has come across this before? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan C Posted August 2, 2023 Share Posted August 2, 2023 Hi @Amy Halim, Can you please confirm for me: What version of macOS are you using? Does this happen when opening the PDF in an app that is not Preview, after exporting the PDF file? Many thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted August 2, 2023 Share Posted August 2, 2023 Looks like the PDF viewing app being helpful and interpreting the table text for you. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted August 2, 2023 Share Posted August 2, 2023 45 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: Looks like the PDF viewing app being helpful and interpreting the table text for you. That’s what I thought too. It seems to be picking up two fives, then a space, then two sixes, then a space, then two sevens, etc. etc. A bit like part of what's contained in part of the table. It would be interesting to get an example document containing just that table to experiment with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Halim Posted August 2, 2023 Author Share Posted August 2, 2023 6 hours ago, Dan C said: Hi @Amy Halim, Can you please confirm for me: What version of macOS are you using? Does this happen when opening the PDF in an app that is not Preview, after exporting the PDF file? Many thanks in advance! Hi Dan, Thank you for your response. Im using MacOS Ventura 13.4.1. I use the PDF document in Goodnotes app, (I use this app to write on the PDF file) and it highlights the same area. I viewed the document on my iPad Mini. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Halim Posted August 2, 2023 Author Share Posted August 2, 2023 6 hours ago, GarryP said: That’s what I thought too. It seems to be picking up two fives, then a space, then two sixes, then a space, then two sevens, etc. etc. A bit like part of what's contained in part of the table. It would be interesting to get an example document containing just that table to experiment with. Hi GarryP, Yeah I wish I can figure out why it only picked up certain characters. I've extracted the page out if you're interested. Thanks! Schedule.afpub Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oufti Posted August 2, 2023 Share Posted August 2, 2023 8 hours ago, walt.farrell said: Looks like the PDF viewing app being helpful and interpreting the table text for you. Yes. This is a feature of macOS: Live Text (kind of OCR) in any image, even if it's in a –not so– rebarbative administrative PDF. https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/preview/prvw625a5b2c/mac Amy Halim and walt.farrell 2 Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted August 3, 2023 Share Posted August 3, 2023 Amy Halim: Thanks for giving us the sample. As mentioned above, this seems to be one of those cases where the PDF reader software, or the OS, is being ‘helpful’ in a way that isn’t wanted. I don’t use macOS or have the PDF software mentioned so I can’t test it, but Acrobat on Windows doesn’t do the things that have been demonstrated. Since you cannot choose which software people receiving the PDF will be using to read it, it might be good if you can do something in Publisher to stop this from happening but I have a feeling that the ‘remedy’ won’t be ideal. One idea would be to add some white-filled text – i.e. invisible to the user – to the table in the cells between the numbers to try and stop the other software from interpreting the numbers as a phone number, but that’s not a great solution especially as that text could still be selected on-screen in the PDF reader. Another idea could be to have the numbers as images pinned to the table but that’s probably a bit awkward too. Hopefully someone else can suggest something better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Halim Posted August 3, 2023 Author Share Posted August 3, 2023 52 minutes ago, GarryP said: Amy Halim: Thanks for giving us the sample. As mentioned above, this seems to be one of those cases where the PDF reader software, or the OS, is being ‘helpful’ in a way that isn’t wanted. I don’t use macOS or have the PDF software mentioned so I can’t test it, but Acrobat on Windows doesn’t do the things that have been demonstrated. Since you cannot choose which software people receiving the PDF will be using to read it, it might be good if you can do something in Publisher to stop this from happening but I have a feeling that the ‘remedy’ won’t be ideal. One idea would be to add some white-filled text – i.e. invisible to the user – to the table in the cells between the numbers to try and stop the other software from interpreting the numbers as a phone number, but that’s not a great solution especially as that text could still be selected on-screen in the PDF reader. Another idea could be to have the numbers as images pinned to the table but that’s probably a bit awkward too. Hopefully someone else can suggest something better. Feels a little funny how I'm trying to outsmart this helpful PDF reader given that it's not working in my favor in this matter. I also tried creating a blank table with no content, then added a text box for all the text but that didn't work. I was also thinking the same thing you did, pinning the numbers as image by maybe rasterizing the layer but that would bring the quality down greatly. Next I might try recreating the table using the pen/line tool, but I don't know. it's going to be a lot. Wish me luck in trying to figure this out! Really appreciate your responses and suggestions Garry, thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Halim Posted August 3, 2023 Author Share Posted August 3, 2023 21 hours ago, walt.farrell said: Looks like the PDF viewing app being helpful and interpreting the table text for you. It's not being helpful in my favor in this matter unfortunately, Im actively trying to outsmart this smart PDF reader 😆 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted August 3, 2023 Share Posted August 3, 2023 You’re welcome. Unfortunately I can’t do any testing on this because my PDF reader isn’t so ‘smart’. One other idea I had was, for just the numbers, to use a font which had an alternate set of numeric characters and then tell Publisher to use those alternate glyphs. That might fool the PDF reader into not seeing the numbers as numbers (if it is only looking for the standard number character Unicode-numbered glyphs). Another idea was to use a font which only had number-shaped glyphs, all of which are not in the normal place in the character set, but good luck finding one of those. Another idea, which may be more practical, if the numbers aren’t going to change, would be to convert them to curves so they aren’t text any more, or convert the whole table to curves if that’s easier and won’t cause other problems. (Keep the original table in case you need it in the future.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Halim Posted August 3, 2023 Author Share Posted August 3, 2023 UPDATE : SOLVED!! Im happy to share that I've somehow found a workaround. I simply filled the table cells with white color which was otherwise transparent before. I don't have an explanation as to why it works 😆 the exported .pdf now no longer highlights/select the characters/numbers from the table. Thanks so much for all your responses!!! 💚 GarryP and Dan C 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted August 3, 2023 Share Posted August 3, 2023 An unexpected but nice solution, thanks for sharing. Now I’m wondering why it works. Answers on a postcard to the usual address... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oufti Posted August 3, 2023 Share Posted August 3, 2023 4 hours ago, Amy Halim said: Im happy to share that I've somehow found a workaround. I simply filled the table cells with white color which was otherwise transparent before. I don't have an explanation as to why it works 😆 the exported .pdf now no longer highlights/select the characters/numbers from the table. I fear you can't beat the zeal of Apple's apps… Preview and Photos do this recognizing task routinely, looking for text in every image or PDF open, and when it finds that could be some helpful data (tel number, date for an event…), it offers you to add it to your apps, even when it's handwritten text… (The same happens in Mail, Numbers or Pages for text.) Looking the calendar on the right, modified as you said (with white cells), you'll see that on the central part of it, the numbers are still recognized as such but they are not anymore seen as a structured data, well done. But elsewhere, Preview still finds (pseudo) dates and numbers in many other places. I think the best is not to look at it or use another PDF Viewer… Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted August 3, 2023 Share Posted August 3, 2023 15 minutes ago, Oufti said: I think the best is not to look at it or use another PDF Viewer If, and I’m not saying that it’s the case here, the PDF is for other people to use – maybe it’s being sold or distributed otherwise in digital form – then the OP probably won’t have much control over which PDF reader those other people are using. And it’s the OP who will, if this is the case, probably be the one who has to answer questions about what’s going on. Either way, this isn’t really an Affinity problem, but it could be something that the team at Serif could look at just to see if there was anything they could do about it, perhaps, on the off-chance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oufti Posted August 3, 2023 Share Posted August 3, 2023 This recognition function is intriguing but really not intrusive. I don't think it's worth to give it too much importance. And I don't think Serif could or will do anything about this system-wide function. But, if that happens… why not? Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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