Many thanks. I’ll have to read these when I have time over the weekend.
Yep, this whole PDF markup editing seems fraught with caveats and gotchas, TBH.
I’m still surprised at how little Apple seem to care here. PDF is the main text distribution format in the world – so wouldn’t you want your main app for dealing with said format to work properly; seemingly not?! 
I haven’t used Adobe products for years, but I vaguely remember when I was using Acrobat Pro to create documents I had the option of controlling the ‘flow’ of text. I know it affected ‘form fill’ fields, but I think it could also affect flow of text if I chose to (which I never did). This didn’t affect how it looked, but rather the order in which it was created, thus the order in which it could be selected. When I use Preview to select text in a PDF document and it doesn’t select it in the order I expect I just chalk it up to the document being created in that order, whether or not the author knew it was happening or intended for it to be that way (very unlikely). I agree that it can be surprising and frustrating if you can’t select what you want.
For this issue, maybe the user could use their iPhone and capture the image using Apple’s new Live Text camera feature. No doubt there are other utilities out there already that do similar. But yeah, column text can sure be a pain in PDF.
I recently learned about how to set the order of elements on a page in Acrobat Pro to make documents accessible for students. I think that’s what you’re referring to. I doubt this problem is related to that because I’m using a PDF of a textbook, and publishers are required to make these documents accessible. Also, older versions of Preview worked correctly with this file.
It has been a long while since I worked with PDFs programmatically, but at the time, most were a mess internally. Before throwing stones at various viewers, a nod and some sympathy towards ‘garbage in - garbage out’ might inform your perspective. Just as there are many apps that purport to view PDFs, there are many more that create them, with equally varying results.
One viewer I think that’s not been mentioned so far is the generically named PDF Viewer, built on PSPDFKIT, used by many apps.
Apple’s PDFKit has essentially been out of date (broken) for many years. Forms filled out by Preview are unreadable or corrupted when opened elsewhere or in Acrobat. The problem is magnified in environments where you do not have a standard OS image (ie. Universities where students pass documents to instructors.) It is a total mess.
That being said, my PDF viewer/notator of choice on macOS is Skim. It is free, open source, fast, lightweight and has many customizable features. Skim started in the scientific/education/research area but is very useful for daily PDF wrangling. Unfortunately, it is dependent on PDFKit, so do not use it for editing and sharing important forms (that should always be done in Acrobat Reader or Pro).
Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.
The current version 1.6.x is native on Apple Silicon and supports back to OSX 10.10 Yosemite. Older versions support Mac systems back to OSX 10.4 Tiger (see the “System Requirements” section on the sourceforge wiki below).
https://sourceforge.net/p/skim-app/wiki/Main_Page/
Here is a quick example of the Note/Highlight tools I created by right-clicking on words:
My first post here - hello! Thought I’d mention that if you hold down the option key while selecting text in Preview you can control the text being selected. It creates a rectangular selection box as you drag and only text in that box will be selected.
I have to admit my first interaction with support re. PDFpenPro since their acquisition from Nitro was less than satisfactory. I was attempting to edit a form originally created in Acrobat Pro by adding a new form field and found myself unable to edit the field’s border (or for that matter, any of the previously created form fields’ borders). I’ve tried 3 times now to submit a ticket on their support page; each time you submit the form you are directed to a page with 3 button options - User Guide, Knowledge Base, and Community Forum.
Yes, that’s the link in my previous post, and completing the form (which does NOT include a field for describing the question/issue) does NOT generate an automated response or ticket number - it simply takes you to a page with the 3 options illustrated above.
Thanks for this VERY helpful comment re selection rectangle!
And welcome, you will get nothing but civility and helpfulness here. 
If you select one of the options, does it get you further along or are you stuck in faqs with no way to contact them?
Diane
Alas, more or less “stuck in faqs” - User Guide option takes you to software user guide, Knowledge Base to faqs, Community Forum to the community forum. No ticket assignment, no contact from any support team member.
I’ve always respected Smile. With your post, that means I won’t consider PDFpenpro in the future unless they improve.
Smile sold it. They are no longer developing it.
Exactly. It’s no longer Smile, hence my response.
I recently experienced the issue of form filled out in Preview simply did not stay filled when shared. Super broken and really problematic as it was a form I REALLY needed to have filled out properly and usable by recipient.
So, my “net net” here is that there really isn’t any reliable PDF software for the Mac other than Adobe? Seems super crazy but god knows possible. I wonder…
Exactly. Wow.
Despite the PDFKit problems, I still find Skim to be my best friend in regards to PDF documents unless I am working with shared forms.
This very topic of PDF software was discussed extensively on the MacInTouch forums, but sadly that info is now lost (or at least, unavailable).
I would ask the question why Apple has refused to update their PDFKit engine to a more current standard and/or correct the shared PDF form issues that have plagued users for over a decade. But all you have to do is look at how Apple responds–or rather, does not respond–to a growing list of issues and bugs spanning years. Then look at where Apple’s priorities are and it becomes clear.
Forced/leveraged hardware upgrades and App Store fees.
Very unfortunate from the company that used to stand for choice, inclusion and support of standards.
(sorry, was that off topic?)
[EDIT: added Skim link]
This is a very good question. I’m assuming they might not have acquired anyone from Smile’s Help team. But they have had enough time to build a Help team for their new acquisition. If they haven’t, they need to do so.
Did the MacInTouch forums die a premature death? No, it wasn’t off topic and I fundamentally agree but not making PDF forms workable is insane; I did not realize the problem was of such longstanding.
I JUST shared an edited-in-Preview form for a very necessary purpose – I’m waiting for the other form to drop tomorrow morning! Will report back.
