Fonts used are not the fonts listed in Properties

Question

Having a very strange issue that in 30+ years, have never encountered. I have several PDF documents from a client where the font that is listed when you view properties is not the font that you see visually.

If you 'edit PDF' and select a section/word of the text, it shows the wrong font name in the list.

The font the PDF says is used is Brown Pro. I can (obviously) go to Adobe Fonts and see what Brown Pro looks like, and it is NOT the font that is visible in these PDFs.

I have no way to serch for the actual font because I can't figure out the name of the font you SEE. My clients marketing team works out of the UK and insists that all fonts used are Brown Pro. But it is very obvious visually that it is a different font.

Very frustrated at this point. I have 8-10 PDFs of business cards, and an 80 page booklet that all claim to be uisng Brown Pro but the font I'm looking at is NOT Brown Pro.

Has anyone else encountered this? Is there anyway possible that there's a version of this font that in the UK it's different than in the US? (I realize out unlikely that is, but I'm asking anyways!) I've attached a small clip of the font they claim to be Brown Pro. If anyone actually knows what this font is, please let me know!

Thank you for any insight y'all might have!

AnandSri · Answer

Hello!

I hope you're doing well, and we apologize for the delayed response and the trouble.

When a PDF claims to be using “Brown Pro” but the text clearly doesn’t match that typeface, Acrobat is almost certainly substituting in a different font because the real font wasn’t properly embedded. Here’s how to confirm what’s happening—and how to get the client to fix it.

See exactly what font is embedded (or substituted):
Open the PDF in Acrobat Pro. Go to All Tools → Print Production → Output Preview. In the right-hand panel, set Show to “Fonts”. You’ll see a list of every font name the PDF references, and on the right, whether it’s “Embedded,” “Embedded Subset,” or “Substituted.” If Brown Pro is not listed as Embedded, Acrobat substituted another font at display time, even though the PDF claims to use Brown Pro.

Inspect the actual embedded font name: In Output Preview, click each font in the list. Acrobat highlights every text run using that font, so you can compare what’s embedded vs. what you see. If the embedded font name is something like CID0+MyClient-BrownPro or a completely different font name, you’ve found the culprit.

Note:

Fonts must be fully embedded when exporting to PDF (especially from InDesign or Word).
If the designer didn’t check “Embed All Fonts” or the PDF export profile excluded Brown Pro (often a licensing restriction), Acrobat will substitute a fallback, usually a standard system font that looks close but isn’t Brown Pro.

Re-export the PDF with full font embedding

In Adobe InDesign: File → Export → Adobe PDF (Print) → Advanced tab → set Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than 100% to 100%, or better yet, Embed All Fonts.

In Microsoft Word: Options → Save → check Embed fonts in the file, and uncheck “Do not embed common system fonts.”

Verify with Acrobat before sending

Have them open the new PDF and use File → Properties → Fonts or Output Preview (above) to confirm “Brown Pro” shows as “Embedded Subset.”

You can also refer to these articles to learn more about Embedding fonts: PDF fonts, How to Embed Fonts in a PDF.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

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