Acrobat export to word (docx) not embedding fonts

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
July 6, 2020
1 reply
7136 views

I am a music book author. My books are written in indesign with the music imported into frames as PDF files. I generate the PDF files from indesign using the package option and selecting to embed all fonts into the PDF files. I know the PDFs are correct because I sell the PDFs all over the world to users on android, iphone, mac and pc who don't have the fonts on their systems.

However, when I open the file in acrobat pro dc and export to docx, the fonts are not embedded into the PDF frames. See picture for details. On top is how is the docx file, on the bottom is the PDF.

i'm using indesign 15.1.1 and acrobat pro 20.0 (both latest versions according to creativecloud desktop

junk.docx

junk.pdf

Edit and convert PDFs

This topic has been closed for replies.

gary_sc

Community Expert

Hi Jack,

It's not that the PDF is not exporting the fonts, it's that exporting into a Word document is not supposed to export the fonts. That would violate the copywrite of the fonts. The fonts are embeded into the PDF because that's the whole point of PDFs: digital printing. Imagine trying to print the documents from InDesign but not having the fonts show up on the printed page.

I have to admit that if you are converting the PDF to docx, why the Word version isn't picking up the music font from your computer I'm not all that sure of.

But just out of curiosity, why are you converting a PDF into Word? You have the original InDesign documents?

Oh, one other thought: is it possible that these fonts are ONLY supposed to work within InDesign (and in ID-created PDFs)?

J

jackzuckerphotographyAuthor

Participating Frequently

the reason I am converting from indesign to word is that I'm currently paying $60/month for the adobe products lease and just took a pay cut due to the Covid-19 economic downturn and can no longer justify spending that kind of dough on books that are in maintenance mode so I want to get them out of the proprietary format and into word. And no, the fonts have nothing to do with indesign. The fonts are part of finale music software and through the licensing agreement are able to be embedded in PDF files and other output generated by the tool.

And the point of PDFs is no longer just for printing. PDFs are used as a unversal distribution format for embedding, reviewing and commenting and in fact it makes no sense that if I do something with the following workflow, the embedded PDF graphics do not export the correct fonts into word: (note, this is not the primary one I'm using but by all rights, should work according to your explanation...)

Print my book
select print to pdf as the print driver (doesn't matter if I use the adobe or microsoft driver)
open acrobat dc pro
save to word document

I tried a test which was to take type some text in indesign and change the text to Finale's Maestro font. Then exported to PDF and opened that in acrobat, converted to word and the text comes in as times new roman. In this case, there is no embedding. Docx in word doesn't have the fonts embedded in it. They are there as references so there is NO reason it would not export the font name reference. I tried exporting to HTML and sure enough, the referenced font in HTML was times new roman.

Seems like a bug to me.

Dov Isaacs

Legend

thanks for looking into this but the fonts are not prohibited from embedding according to their companies. And it's not just finale "ignoring" embedding rules. It exports just fine to a PDF using indesign so I think your explanation (along that train of thought) may not be correct.

The “companies” may be saying otherwise, but the fonts in the flags do indeed show that the fonts have restricted embedding privileges, unless of course there are multiple versions of these fonts out there:

That having been said, if Finale does ignore the embedding flag to produce PDF, then InDesign will place such a PDF file since InDesign doesn't look at the individual fonts already embedded in placed PDF for its PDF export.

Ultimately, though, the real issue here is that staffs of musical notation are not something that native Word supports as strings of text and Acrobat's export to .docx is limited as to what level of hacking around it is going to attempt, especially using PUA-encoded symbolic fonts, to replicate the original.

Again, I have provided a multiple part workaround that indeed works, however clunky that may be.

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

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