Every font in a PDF file includes a mapping from the glyph shapes to their meaning. Without this mapping, editing would not be possible nor would content export. In some PDF documents, these mappings are incorrect or corrupted.

Previous versions of FlexiPDF could apply a partial fix, so that the PDF could be edited or exported. FlexiPDF 2019 goes further and can repair the mapping so that it and other PDF editors can edit and export the text correctly.

Manually correcting the font mapping


  1. Choose Text > Remap Fonts to open the font mapping dialog box. The dialog box is similar to the Character Palette dialog.
  2. Click on a glyph that has an incorrect mapping.

    In this example, glyph shape '6' is incorrectly mapped to '&'. This means that if you were to convert this PDF to HTML for example, all occurrences of 6 would export as &.
  3. Press 6 on your keyboard to fix the mapping.
  4. The glyph display will change, showing the shape 6 and the mapping 6 in the bottom right corner with a yellow background.
  5. The next glyph in the table will be selected automatically.
  6. Keep pressing keys on the keyboard to remap each glyph in turn.
  7. Press OK to repair the PDF using the mapping you just made.

Automatically correcting the font mapping

FlexiPDF 2019 also offers automated repair. Press the Auto Correct button, and FlexiPDF will use optical character recognition (OCR) to identify every glyph in the selected font.

The process is much faster than correcting by hand. However, in some cases the OCR may make a mistake. In this case, just correct it as detailed above.

The Auto Correct feature is limited to Latin characters and a few accented glyphs. It is best used on fonts with basic Latin glyphs.