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Attila_Bujdoso
Attila_Bujdoso
January 26, 2021
Question

PDF export - text not selectable

  • January 26, 2021
  • 67 replies
  • 33247 views

Hi all, I created some designs that I exported as PDF. I have two problems with the result:

  1. The text is not selectable (I tried Mac’s Preview and Safari).

  2. The files are rather large (1MB for an A4 size design, no images or vectors, just a few text bozes.

Any ideas how to overcome this? (I would try to avoid bringing it back my design to Sketch.

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    67 replies

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    jonoyoung
    jonoyoung
    New Participant
    June 14, 2022

    @Jeremy18 did your figma file use text styles, text as components, auto layout text, or just plain text layers?

    A UI can be designed. A UX can be measured.
    Soren
    Soren
    June 28, 2022

    This is really a pressing accessibility concern for my team as we are managing the new digital style.

    Amr_Khalifeh
    Amr_Khalifeh
    July 28, 2022

    The PDF exporter from CopyDoc solves the text selection issue! Thanks for posting this here!

      jonoyoung
      jonoyoung
      New Participant
      August 3, 2022

      Yw. Drove me crazy when I was documenting our design system in Figma. Built an entire 8.5 x 11 design system manual called Dox, only to find the text couldn’t be copied from the manual as PDFs.

      Word export is decent too. Sometimes, I had to go to .doc then PDF but can’t remember why.

      A UI can be designed. A UX can be measured.
      Anastasiia_Sobolieva
      Anastasiia_Sobolieva
      August 18, 2022

      August 17, 2022…The problem still not solved… Hope that it will…

        Jarek_Marciniak1
        Jarek_Marciniak1
        New Participant
        October 2, 2022

        How in the world did “export to PDF” function got into production without the most basic option available? PDF without text? Let’s add export to 3D without actual 3D then… guys, come one.

          Anderson_N_Silva
          Anderson_N_Silva
          October 14, 2022

          Just a heads up for people that are trying to export their CV from Figma to PDF: don’t mess with the layer opacity of your text, keep it at 100% and normal.

          I made the mistake of fiddling with layer opaciy insted of chosing the right shade of gray and was unable to select any text in my PDF. Don’t know how it fits into the overall problem but it might have something to do with it. Hope it helps.

            jonoyoung
            jonoyoung
            New Participant
            October 29, 2022

            This week, I was able to export a Figma frame to PDF, then open the PDF Preview and Acrobat for macOS and the text was selectable. Seems improvements have been made by the crew at Figma.

            Preview of PDF

            image

            A UI can be designed. A UX can be measured.
            Diero
            Diero
            December 6, 2022

            Hello friend, there is a simple solution,
            Select the frame you are going to export and in the export panel, select the .svg format and in the 3 small dots of options, uncheck the outline text, proceed to export it in svg.

            You can then open this file in Illustrator or directly in Google crhome and save it again as a pdf with editable text.
            If you have many files, you can use the batch processing of illustrator to open and save in PDF format.

            I hope it works for you.
            Regards
            image

              igormenezes
              igormenezes
              February 1, 2023

              It worked here! Thank you so much!

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