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J
jackzuckerphotography
Participating Frequently
July 6, 2020
Question

Acrobat export to word (docx) not embedding fonts

  • July 6, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 7108 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

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

gary_sc
gary_sc
Brainiac
July 6, 2020

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
July 7, 2020

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.

J
jackzuckerphotographyAuthor
Participating Frequently
July 9, 2020

Look near the top of this thread. I listed six steps. I will repeat them here:

 

(1)    Make a “working copy” of the PDF file so that you don't accidentally lose something.

 

(2)    Using the Edit Text and Images function, edit out the actual music portion of the pages, leaving only the text.

 

(3)    Export the renaming content to Word and make appropriate adjustments. The places on the pages where the music was should be blank at this point.

 

(4)    For each of the original music PDF files you have from Finale, open in Acrobat and export as high resolution (at least 600dpi) monochrome TIFF files.

 

(5)    Import each of the resultant TIFF files to their appropriate location in the Word document.

 

(6)    Note that if you are running Word on MacOS and have absolutely no intention of opening those documents in Word on Windows, you can skip step (4) and in lieu of step (5), import the origianl Finale PDF files directly into Word. (Importing PDF graphics into Word on Windows yields low resolution and quality raster graphics).

 

Rasterizing all text means that ultimately you have a useless Word document since you wouldn't be able to edit anything. If you are asking for us to try to differentiate between “normal” text and text that is being used to create the music, that is certainly not “easy” and is well beyond the current scope of the export function, for better or worse. That is far from the typical use case of the export function.

 


oh, i appreciate you documenting all that but I already knew that. The issue is that one of my books is 300 pages with probably 350+ PDF files. The problem with your "workaround" is that with 350+ PDF files and acrobat having no visible reference to the embedded PDF filename, there's no way to correlate. I already know that I could re-import the PDFs as TIF within indesign where the links panel shows me what the filename is. That would be easier. In any event, we're talking about dozens of hours to do this.

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