Got around to this. De- and reinstalling as per your instructions did not change anything. Protected view, protected mode at startup disabled. This also did not change anything. ... View more

It really depends on what you as a prepress specialist / printer need to do with the files. There was a big shift along printers to move to a 'blind file exchange' type workflow using flattened PDF files some years back because of the state of software/hardware rips. A lot of printers decided that they could get their customers to supply print ready pdf files which needed little to no touch-up before being dropped in the pdf workflow. We see a lot of printers moving back from this and requesting at least editable PDFs or illustrator files. There is one side effect on saving PDF files from illustrator with 'preserve illustrator editing capabilities' checked: The illustrator part and the PDF part of the file are two separate documents in the same file (I'm not sure if the two share components like images). Changing the PDF part in a PDF only application (like Acrobat pro) and saving it will only change the pdf part. The illustrator part stays untouched, and the changes to the PDF part will be lost if you open the file in illustrator. ... View more

Yeah... Retain Illustrator editing abilities is just another way of saying "Save the Illustrator file into the pdf file". You will notice that checking this box will massively increase the PDF file size. So if you then in turn open the PDF file in illustrator, it will open the illustrator file saved inside the PDF. As Illustrator does not work with embedded fonts (and the .ai file format does not let you save with fonts embedded) you will get the missing fonts dialog. But: Placing a pdf in a new illustrator document as a link will allow you to print or export the embedded image with the embedded fonts intact. Of course the fonts will need to be embedded correctly in the linked PDF file for this to work... Embedding the PDF file (so, not linking, but interpreting and placing the contents) will require you to have the fonts installed on your machine, because illustrator wants you to be able te edit the text, and it needs the installed fonts for this. One solution to this could be to use the acrobat 'Convert fonts to outlines" flow on the pdf you want to embed/import/edit into illustrator before you import/embed it into Illustrator. ... View more

This is true. A workaround is placing some transparent object somewhere in your file to ensure the document is flattened. My experience is that if transparency is used anywhere on the page, outlining text will also happen anywhere on the page (even if it is not touched/affected by a transparent object). I tend to place a small white rectangle somewhere on the edge of the page, overlapping some artwork element. I then set the transparency to "Darken" (in CMYK this is the equivalent of overprinting) so it will not show up but will trigger the flattener for the page. If you do not want it to be in the way when working, put it on a top layer and lock it... ... View more