Missing font warning for Arial

Hello, posting here for as I was having this same warning with another font when editing a PDF in adobe DC.

The following worked for me:

Run "adobe acrobat distiller dc".

Select "settings" from top menu and select "edit adobe PDF settings".

Select fonts.

Make sure your font appears in the fonts window (or select font location). If it is not there, you must add the font to said location and it should appear. (Make sure to close and restart program)

Make sure to remove all fonts from the "Never embed" section.

Save.

Easy fix is to use PDF Expert.. When Adopey app gives me this Arial font nonsense on my Apple systems, I simply open the document in PDF Expert.. no fuss, no muss, no problems.... It opens and renders just fine.

Seems Adobe has cooked their own goose, once again.

Felicia,

When I open the PDF in Illustrator CC 2017 ( using same system on which the Bates numbering was added), Illustrator gives me a font warning for the missing font Arial!

Maybe your Mac has it (rightly) as Fake Helvetica.

Helvetica doesn't need to be embedded because that's the rule, part of the PDF specification, right or wrong. Originally, for many years, and still for older PDF versions, there was no embedding allowed for form fields, and only a choice if 14.

Helvetica doesn't need to be embedded for page text either. But the recommendations have changed over the years. Except for this form field case we're now strongly encouraged to embed, not least because PDF/A and PDF/X require it. So, what default? 99% of Windows users won't own Helvetica but both Mac and Windows users will both have Arial.

PDF designers can and do freely mix Helvetica for fields and Arial for page text; they will match well enough and usually exactly.

I don't have an answer, of course, as I don't work for Adobe. I have taught Acrobat for Legal Professionals since Acrobat 7, and am somewhat familiar with the issues that legal professionals have with Acrobat.

Bates numbering is a legal device (done with a stamp before computers), and most legal professionals use Windows, not Mac. Arial is, of course, a standard font on Windows. Could that be why they chose it? Maybe. It's a good question to ask on the Acrobat forums. Although there are dozens of sub-forums for Acrobat, there is not one for Legal. I am tagging Tariq Dar​ to ask the best forum to move this thread to (or to create one for Legal Professionals).

http://paperlesschase.com/bates-stamping-pdfs-is-fast-easy-and-inexpensive/

Here is your Acrobat workaround:

Select the font you want that you have on your Mac and insert the Bates Number where you want it. Then click the Save Settings... button and name your preset. This preset will now appear in the dropdown for Saved Settings: (my preset is called Monarch Training).

(Another good question is: why do form fields in Acrobat default to Helvetica? But we'll save that for another day!)

Also, the best way to edit the PDF is with Acrobat, not with Illustrator. What are you trying to do in Illustrator?

Hope this helps,

Jane

That's not a glitch.

You're just doing something that PDF was never meant for.

It's not a suitable format for editing.

The way fonts get embedded in a PDF might rename the font. On top of that every application might handle the font embedding a little differently and Illustrator is not a universal purpose PDF editor.

So just replace the font.

And please do read this:

Prepression: The Ten Commandments of PDF