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Participating Frequently
July 10, 2023
Question

Wingdings replacing courier text in old pdf

  • July 10, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 2470 views

A colleague is having a problem with a pdf containing 151 schematics for one of our buildings. The pdf was created in 2009 by the architectural firm hired for the renovation. When she opens the file, the information section for each page has been replaced by wingdings.  She sent the file to me to review. I opened it on a mac and pc. I have the same issue that she did. I use Adobe Acrobat Pro and she uses Reader. I do not get an error message when I open the file. When I highlight the wingdings, the font is listed as courier. If I change the font to Arial, nothing changes. The wingdings stay.  If I select and copy the wingdings, paste into a generic text editor, the correct text pastes. The document properties section says that courier is an embedded subset. 

 

Here is how the wingdings appear on the page:

Any help is appreciated.  I tried this solution about embedding fonts posted here (https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/text-changes-to-special-symbols-with-saving-pdf-in-acrobat/m-p/10634321) and it did not work.

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1 reply

Brad @ Roaring Mouse
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 10, 2023

If you open the file in another viewer besides Acrobat, even a browser, does it show the same issue?

Meanwhile, in Acrobat, create an inventory (Print Production > Preflight > Options...). You can deselect any box except Fonts and click OK. Look at the report and see if it has any better info for you for where the fonts are going awry.

KathrynLAuthor
Participating Frequently
July 12, 2023

Thank you for the information. I created an inventory for the first page. Nothing seems wrong with the Courier properties. This is the first time I've run an inventory, so I may not be interpreting the results correctly.

KathrynLAuthor
Participating Frequently
July 12, 2023

I did notice that Q, q, and z, are not included in the glyphs. I don't know if that could cause the issue.