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BanditRucki
New Participant
March 8, 2018
Answered

Adobe Publisher PDF file size from Excel file

  • March 8, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 2384 views

3 people using Adobe Publisher software are PDFing Excel files the same way, but the PDF files output by each person are different. One is approx. 85 kb, another 90 kb and the other 155 kb. Tried to do Save As Optimize and Reduce size of PDF but doesn't do anything to the 155 kb output. As a team we put 200+ PDF files into a PDF Portfolio and load into a database and now the PDF portfolio is too large to load because it is 2.5 times the size with the output from the 2nd team member. Any suggestions?

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Correct answer Dov Isaacs

The user and I have corresponded off-forum and I examined the files.

In summary:

  • Both the files were generated by printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance, i.e. creating PDF from Excel by converting PostScript to PDF.

  • In the smaller file, none of the four faces of Arial referenced were embedded. This yielded a 93 KByte file.

  • In the larger file, both Arial and Arial Bold were subset-embedded (Arial Italic and Arial Bold Italic were referenced but not embedded).

My best guess is that the larger file was produced on a system with a newer version of the Arial font family. The Arial font family that is bundled with Windows 10 is dramatically larger than that bundled with Windows 7 not only in font file size, but also in terms of the number glyph definitions in the fonts (Arial supports an exceptionally large number of character sets including Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. as well as many mathematical and graphical symbols). Apparently, when the larger fonts are encountered in Distiller, it triggers Distiller forcing subset embedding of such fonts using CID Identity-H encoding. We are currently looking at the Distiller code and confirming that and whether we can or should relax that behaviour.

I did try producing a PDF file using Acrobat's PDFMaker with the original Excel file and in fact created a 47 KByte file (no Arial or Calibri fonts from the original spreadsheet were embedded).

All this having been said, in general, it is preferred to create PDF file in which all fonts that are referenced are subset embedded. Why, because despite having the same name, fonts do differ between platforms (MacOS versus Windows), OS versions, etc. If a font is not embedded in a PDF file, then there is a possibility that the PDF file will not be properly displayed or printed by the recipient. What is more important, file size or fidelity of what the recipient gets and sees? Over the past nearly 25 years of PDF and Acrobat, we have seen more problems due to mismatches between the font referenced (but not embedded) by PDF files versus what is available as the font or a substitute font on the recipient’s computer than almost any other individual issue. (We joke that font is a four letter word starting with a ‘f’!) If you were to embed all fonts, the resultant PDF file  would be 224 Kbytes in size. Yes, this is bigger, but it is much safer in terms of knowing that the recipient will be able to properly view and/or print the PDF file on any system, regardless of which fonts are installed on same.

          - Dov

2 replies

Dov Isaacs
Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
Legend
March 9, 2018

The user and I have corresponded off-forum and I examined the files.

In summary:

  • Both the files were generated by printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance, i.e. creating PDF from Excel by converting PostScript to PDF.

  • In the smaller file, none of the four faces of Arial referenced were embedded. This yielded a 93 KByte file.

  • In the larger file, both Arial and Arial Bold were subset-embedded (Arial Italic and Arial Bold Italic were referenced but not embedded).

My best guess is that the larger file was produced on a system with a newer version of the Arial font family. The Arial font family that is bundled with Windows 10 is dramatically larger than that bundled with Windows 7 not only in font file size, but also in terms of the number glyph definitions in the fonts (Arial supports an exceptionally large number of character sets including Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. as well as many mathematical and graphical symbols). Apparently, when the larger fonts are encountered in Distiller, it triggers Distiller forcing subset embedding of such fonts using CID Identity-H encoding. We are currently looking at the Distiller code and confirming that and whether we can or should relax that behaviour.

I did try producing a PDF file using Acrobat's PDFMaker with the original Excel file and in fact created a 47 KByte file (no Arial or Calibri fonts from the original spreadsheet were embedded).

All this having been said, in general, it is preferred to create PDF file in which all fonts that are referenced are subset embedded. Why, because despite having the same name, fonts do differ between platforms (MacOS versus Windows), OS versions, etc. If a font is not embedded in a PDF file, then there is a possibility that the PDF file will not be properly displayed or printed by the recipient. What is more important, file size or fidelity of what the recipient gets and sees? Over the past nearly 25 years of PDF and Acrobat, we have seen more problems due to mismatches between the font referenced (but not embedded) by PDF files versus what is available as the font or a substitute font on the recipient’s computer than almost any other individual issue. (We joke that font is a four letter word starting with a ‘f’!) If you were to embed all fonts, the resultant PDF file  would be 224 Kbytes in size. Yes, this is bigger, but it is much safer in terms of knowing that the recipient will be able to properly view and/or print the PDF file on any system, regardless of which fonts are installed on same.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    March 8, 2018

    There is no such product as Adobe Publisher! Are you referring to Adobe Acrobat?

    Without posting some example Excel and PDF files exhibiting this issue, there isn't much we can do to advise you. Generally speaking, if you were to use the Acrobat PDFMaker feature with the exact same Excel file on identically-configured systems with the exact same options specified for the PDF creation, you should get PDF files of approximately the same size (slight differences due to PDF metadata).

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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    BanditRuckiAuthor
    New Participant
    March 8, 2018

    Hi,

    I have Adobe Acrobat DC.

    One co worker has Adobe Acrobat XI DC

    The other has Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

    Thanks.

    Regards,

    Debra Rucki

    (Edited by Moderator to remove personal Info)

    B
    BanditRuckiAuthor
    New Participant
    March 8, 2018

    There is no such product as Adobe Acrobat XI DC. It is either Acrobat XI  (aka Acrobat 11) or Acrobat DC.

    And again, without samples (the PDF files and the source files), we can't evaluate what's going on and whether the file size differences are to be expected or not.

              - Dov


    Hi,

    This is what my co-worker sent me from her laptop. I can send you the PDFs and source file. Do you have a private email address. Thanks.

    <edited to remove private information>

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