Text in drawing does not appear correctly when you print to Adobe PDF Writer with Visio 2002 or Visio 2003

When you print a Microsoft Visio drawing to Adobe PDF Writer, you may find that text in the drawing does not appear correctly. For example, the text in the drawing may be jumbled or in an incorrect font.

This behavior may occur when you try to export a Visio drawing to Portable Document Format (PDF) by printing to Adobe PDF Writer.

To resolve this behavior, use one of the following methods, as appropriate to your situation.

Method 1

Print directly to Acrobat Distiller. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In Visio, open the drawing that you want to print.
2. On the File menu, click Print.
3. In the Name box, click Distiller.
4. Select the Print to file check box, and then click OK.
5. Specify a file name and a location where you want to save the file, and then click Save.

Method 2

Print the drawing to a PostScript (.ps) file by using a Windows PostScript printer driver, and then use Acrobat Distiller to open the file and create the .pdf file. To do this, follow these steps.

Note To follow these steps, you must have a PostScript printer driver installed. If no PostScript driver is available, install the Apple Laserwriter II NT driver.

1. In Visio, open the drawing that you want to print.
2. On the File menu, click Print.
3. In the Name box, click the PostScript printer, click to select the Print to File check box, and then click OK.
4. In the Print to File dialog box, specify a file name with a ".ps" file name extension, and specify the location where you want to save the file. Then, click Save.
5. Quit Visio.
6. Start Windows Explorer.
7. Locate and then double-click the .ps file that you saved in step 4.

Acrobat Distiller starts and then creates a .pdf file in the folder where you saved the .ps file.

Method 3

Save the drawing as a PostScript (.ps) file, and then use Acrobat Distiller to open the file and create the .pdf file. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In Visio, open the drawing that you want to print.
2. On the File menu, click Save As.
3. In the Save as type box, click PostScript File (*.ps).
4. Specify a file name and a location where you want to save the file, and then click Save.
   
   The AI/EPS Output Filter Setup dialog box appears.
5. Select the Include AI Format check box, and then click OK.
6. Quit Visio.
7. Start Windows Explorer.
8. Locate and then double-click the .ps file that you saved in step 4.

Acrobat Distiller starts, and it creates a .pdf file in the folder in which you saved the .ps file.

To work around this behavior, format the text in the drawing to use the Arial Unicode MS font, and then print the drawing to Adobe PDF Writer. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Visio, and then open the drawing that you want to print.
2. On the Edit menu, click Select All.
3. On the Format menu, click Text.
4. Click the Font tab.
5. In the Font box, click Arial Unicode MS.
6. Under Style, select the Bold check box, and then click OK.
7. On the File menu, click Print.
8. In the Name box, click PDF Writer.
9. Select the Print to file check box, and then click OK.
10. Specify a file name and location where you want to print the file, and then click Save.

With Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and later, both Adobe PDF Writer and Acrobat Distiller are installed as printing devices in the Printers folder of Control Panel in Windows.

Microsoft Visio 2002 and Microsoft Office Visio 2003 use GDI Plus technology. This graphics device interface technology permits Visio to be printer-independent for on-screen rendering operations. Some earlier device drivers may not support this technology. For more information about how to troubleshoot similar issues, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.