Hello,

Recently we noticed quite a few PDF files that used to be displayed properly in Office Web Apps now display garbage characters.

The PDF files are not corrupted because:

• If we open them in Adobe Reader, they display OK.
• If we open them in browser (IE or Chrome) but bypassing Word Web Apps, they display OK.
• If we open them in Word Web App, although the characters don't display OK, we can still do FIND in the document and the result are displayed properly on the left side.

It also doesn't seem like fonts are the problem as some other PDFs that use the same font can be displayed properly in Word Web Apps.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

Regards
Conway

• Edited by Conway Liu 5 hours 10 minutes ago Should say Word Web App instead of Office Web App

Office Web App renders PDF on browser with Word Web App. Can you try to open your pdf with Microsoft Word client application? 

Thank you for your suggestion Thuan.

Our client MS Word is still 2010 and it cannot open any PDF files.

Kind regards

Can you just upload those affected PDF file in OneDrive.com to see if the issue still happens?

That is a good suggestion Thuan, thank you. I will give it a go.

But we also found that this issue is not happening in our QA and DEV environments, it only happens on our PROD now.

There are some possibilities:

1. Some security patches have been installed recently (on PROD, QA, and DEV). The time that they were installed kind of matches the time we started noticing the problem. Two of the updates are to do with embedded TTF/OTF. These are KB3079757 and KB3078601. I wonder if those updates are the cause of the issue.
2. Our DEV and QA have got SharePoint SP1 and May 2015 CU installed. Our PROD is yet to have the SP1 and CU installed. I wonder if the PDF display might be messed up by the security updates, but remediated by SP1/CU on QA and DEV.

Kind regards

Conway