Docusign changing SOME document terms to gibberish/symbols

Hi ​@PalmSprings_RealEstate 

Thank you for reaching out here in Docusign Community.

I’m sorry to hear about the inconvenience you experienced with your completed document.

Based on your description, the issue is most commonly related to font encoding or character rendering during the document conversion process.

When documents generated from systems like ZipForms contain certain fonts, special characters, or embedded text elements, DocuSign may occasionally substitute or fail to interpret them correctly during the final PDF rendering.

This can result in some terms appearing as symbols or unreadable characters, even when they appeared normal before signing.

A few points that may help clarify the situation:

DocuSign converts uploaded documents into a secure PDF format during the completion process. If the original file contains fonts that are not fully embedded, proprietary form fields, or special symbols, these may not translate perfectly in the final conversion.

The issue is not related to your PDF viewer, as you’ve correctly identified—if the symbols appear even in DocuSign’s online view, it occurred during rendering on DocuSign’s side.

The fact that the previous completed envelope did not have this issue suggests that a specific field, character, or formatting in this version of your ZipForms document may have triggered the encoding conflict.

Resending a new envelope is a good step. I also recommend the following to prevent recurrence:

1. Save or print your ZipForms document as a flattened PDF before uploading to DocuSign. This removes dynamic fields and forces all text to embed properly.
2. Avoid specialized or non-standard fonts in any editable sections if possible.
3. Ensure all form fields are fully populated before exporting from ZipForms, as empty or dynamic fields sometimes cause encoding issues.

If the issue persists in the newly sent envelope, I highly suggest that you open a case by following the steps provided in the link below so we can check this further and see if there’s any possible bug. 

Open a case in the Docusign Support Center

We appreciate your 18 years of trust in DocuSign, and we’re here to help ensure this gets resolved smoothly.

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Best regards,
Marco | Docusign Community Moderator
"Select as Best" below if you find the answer a valid solution to your issue!

Hi ​@PalmSprings_RealEstate,

How are you? We’d like to know if the previous response effectively addressed your questions. If so, we'd greatly appreciate it if you could give it a like and mark it as "Best Answer ✅"? This helps other community members find trusted answers. 

Let us know if you still need further assistance. We're here for you! 😊

Sincerely,

Melanie | Docusign Community Moderator