Problem converting Word 2007 equations

New information:

This problem only occurs when I use "Create PDF" in the Acrobat ribbon. Printing to Adobe PDF Converter works fine.

I would appreciate any troubleshooting suggestions. Thanks.

I have just purchased Acrobat Standard 9.2 to convert Word 2007 files (with equations) to pdf. I am having the same problem - equation lines are blank. Acrobat does not appear to be picking up the Cambrian Math font in the Windows/Font directory for some reason. Problem occurs whether I try to convert the file from within Word or from Acrobat itself. Hope someone can help me too....

I am in a similar predicament as what rossmccasrtney and ulman find themselves in.

I have been using Acrobat Professopnal (currently 9.3.2) since last year and suddenly now it seems to ignore my equations I created in MS Word 2007 and replace it with lines. I have also tried to print to a PDF file but that also does not work. To all the smart people at Adobe - how is it possible that from March 2010 (the last time I have used it) up to now we have such a huge problem?

I am desperate to solve this problem.

We have been troubleshooting this issue at work also. It appears one of the Microsoft patches from June broke this functionality in Adobe. We are methodically stepping through determining what specific patch caused the problem, but with 10 Office patches and several OS patches, this is taking some time. If anyone determines which patch broke this, please let me know!!

Update: This appears to be caused by MS10-036: KB982135. I would try uninstalling this patch and see if you still have the problem. We are going to open a ticket with MicroSoft to see what they say.

Also recommended by Microsoft to resolve the issue:
Load the “Files for Complex Script and right-to-left languages” found under Regional and Language Options in the control panel.

Good Luck.

In addition to the problem described in this thread, Arial captions in my .docx file were converted to Times New Roman in the PDF. I removed the suspect patch. Equations and captions are now correctly rendered in the PDF. Hopefully, MicroSoft will correct the patch and re-issue it since our updates are administratively controlled and I expect to get hosed again with the next push of updates. I did not load "Files for Complex Script and right-to-left languages."

Thanks to dswayney for the tip.

THANK YOU dswayney and Fixit!!

I removed the patch identified by dswayney and confirmed by Fixit. That solved the problem.

Please post again if you hear anything from MS about KB982135.

A big thank you from me too dswayney and Fixit - much appreciated!

To all involved - THANKS! I deleted the patch and everything seem to be working fine now.

Yes, exactly the solution I was looking to find! I was starting to resolve myself to just printing .pdf for evermore.

Equation conversion problem returns. Following dswayney's tip to remove KB982135, I have been able to successfully create PDF's. When the system was administratively scanned, KB982135 was re-installed. I just deleted it again when the need arose to create a PDF. On 8/12/10, I received the following patches from Microsoft: MS10-047KB981852, MS10-048KB2160329, MS10-049KB980436, MS10-050KB981997, MS10-051KB2079403, and MS10-054KB982214.

KB982135 is no longer listed as an update in my Add or Remove Programs so apparently one of the above patches replaced KB982135. KB982135 was part of MS10-036. When browsing through Microsoft Support's Description of Software Update Services and Windows Server Update Services changes in content for 2010, MS10-036 isn't even listed.

Any ideas on fixing this mess, again? In a post on Microsoft's website about the equation problem, Microsoft did not acknowledge the problem existed.

I have the same problem as Fixit. First, I removed the update KB982135 and then I was able to save to pdf with the equations converted. However, now it seems that this patch has been installed again without beeing listed in the Add or Remove Programs.

I have tried to install the KB982135 manually with the exe-file found at Microsoft to see if the update would then show up in Add or Remove Programs, but it just prompts that the update is already installed. I have unsuccessfully tried to uninstall the patch manually with the command-line: "msiexec /package {Product-ID of Office 2007} /uninstall "C:\update\KB982135\word.msp"" where word.msp is the extracted installation file from the KB982135 exe-file. I suspect that another patch includes the KB982135 patch, so it is not possible to uninstall it alone.

Would appreciate some tips on how fix the problem with the equations not being converted to pdf, and/or how the remove the KB982135 update.

I am currently working directly with Microsoft to try and unravel the problem. As posted earlier, KB982135 was a "sub-patch" to MS10-036. MS10-036 was replaced by MS10-56. In MS10-56, KB2251419 is the "sub-patch" for Word 2007 Service Pack 2. Removal of KB2251419 did not correct the equation problem. I will update the forum when I have anything further.

I did the following procedure to identify the patch that caused the equation problem: I uninstalled the Office 2007 suite and then did a new installation. Then, I installed one update in a time and between each update I checked if the equations was converted to pdf. I discovered that the patch Fixit mentioned, KB2251419, caused the equation problem. By uninstalling the patch, the equation problem is fixed for me.

Since that patch clearly replaces the KB982135 patch, as given in MS10-56, I can see why I got this problem after updating. I thought I solved the case for the equation problem, but unfortunately it seems to not have worked for Fixit.

Hi, I guess I'm one of the many joining this post - I have problems with converting equations into pdf files (Sept 2010) -small horizontal lines appear instead. Is there any solution yet?

In my previous posts I did not state my configuration: Windows XP Pro SP3, Office 2007 SP2, Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.3.4.

After weaving through IT support and eventually working directly with Mcrosoft, the equation problem is with Windows XP when using Office 2007/2010. The problem does not occur if you use Vista or Windows 7. The solution for those of us still using Windows XP is found above in dswaney's 2010-7-14 post. Currently, with all security patches installed and with support for Complex Script and right-to-left languages installed, equations are now properly rendered in the pdf regardless of whether the equation originated from Equation Editor 3.0 or the equation editor that is now "native" to Office 2007/2010. I have verified this only by printing to the Adobe PDF printer and have not attempted to use any of the other means available to create pdf's.

A quick work around is to save the offending docx into a doc (word 2003), doing that will cause the equations to be saved as images and then convert the doc into pdf.

I don't have time to keep track of all the Windows updates. What works for me now (although I don't consider it a fix) is to print 2007 Word docs (.docx) with equations in them to the PDF printer. That works fine, but the convert-to-PDF tab in the Word ribbon still doesn't.

How to uninstall KB982135 ? Thank you!

Has this bug been fixed yet? It's been well over a year since it was first reported here. This is still failing for me and it's a real pain in the butt.

I tried to load the “Files for Complex Script and right-to-left languages” found under Regional and Language Options in the control panel as suggested above, but apparently I don't have the right system disk any more. Is there somewhere I can download that file?

I realize that this is not an Adobe problem, but my chances of getting an answer from Microsoft are close to zero.

Any help would be appreciated.