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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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    titanas
    titanas
    April 2, 2024

    @Antonio_Marquez glad to hear it works and your Figma workflow is now improved.

    samanthasen776
    May 28, 2024

    What specific features does the Super PDF plugin offer for merging frames into a single PDF file in comparison to using the Preview app workaround?

    titanas
    titanas
    May 31, 2024

    Hey @samanthasen776, there are two key benefits which are important to me. One is that I do what I do inside Figma, avoiding context switching especially when I’m on my laptop with limited screen real estate. The second benefit is that I can do this on both Figma and FigJam.

    Amgad_Okail
    Amgad_Okail
    June 4, 2024

    PDF Export with TEXT and VECTOR objects | Figma

    This plugin did it for me

      syahra
      syahra
      June 29, 2024

      I had a similar issue and no plugin can maintain the layout that I want. But finally, after trying this and that, I can export the PDF in Figma with selectable text! Here’s what I did:

      • Remove all opacity variables for layers or color, and make sure everything is 100%
      • Remove all auto-layout and groups
      • I used a Google Fonts typeface, which was not quite popular, but the PDF result didn’t work. So I tried to use a more common font first (Times New Roman) then tried to export and see the result (selectable or not). Once it’s selectable I could adjust it to my desired typeface.

      It works now!

        Marios
        Marios
        October 28, 2024

        I found a solution! Export the screen as .pdf and then use Make PDF searcheable. Online OCR tool. to convert it to searchable and selectable text

        BEN_GEORGE1
        BEN_GEORGE1
        New Member
        December 17, 2024

        This worked for me thanks

          daniell
          daniell
          New Member
          February 12, 2025

          Thanks for the heads up, Marios. This other OCR tool works the best IMO. The “I love pdf” one worked but ended up rasterizing my text which rendered it blurry at larger sizes. 

          Ryan Vickerman
          Ryan Vickerman
          New Member
          March 14, 2025

          We just signed an enterprise contract….wish I had known that this is an issue. It’s a deal breaker for us, as we need this for our legal/compliance team to review. 

          The only work-around that I’ve found is using the OCR feature in Acrobat. Not ideal and leads to junk text.

          PDF export is table stakes for modern document software….what gives?!

          GunnarW
          GunnarW
          New Member
          March 20, 2025

          This worked for me: 

          1. To enable selecting text: Make sure the opacity of the text is 100% (use shades of gray instead of semi-transparent text)
          2. To make the copied text not have spaces between every letter: Make sure letter spacing is set to 0 (This kind of sucks, but at least it works)
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