Incorrect language encoding when adding notations to note

megan.t.stevenson · April 14, 2022

Hello, I am working with an older article. I am able to highlight sentences using Zotero, but when I click "add note from notations" it's just gobbledygook. I assume it's using the wrong encoding format, since it doesn't recognize the letters for what they are. Is it possible to change the encoding format?

martynas_b · April 20, 2022

Can you open the PDF file with any other PDF viewer and then copy text somewhere to see if it is correct or not? If it isn't, then there is no way to fix that, and it's PDF a file issue.

bartosikm · May 30, 2022

I have the same issue and using Adobe Reader the text is also gibberish when copied. Just out of curiosity: How can the text be displayed correctly when the correct text isn't accessible?

adamsmith · May 31, 2022

How can the text be displayed correctly when the correct text isn't accessible?

Basically, PDFs separate (to varying degrees) the text and the display layer. That's how they manage their biggest strength: they look exactly the same on every computer.
On the downside, that means that you can have PDFs that show text that isn't recognized as text at all, and, as you've found out, you can have PDFs that have gibberish text in the text layer, even though the displayed text looks perfectly readable.