Autotag in Adobe Acrobat DC

Report · Apr 13, 2018

Hi,

Does anyone know the reason why when you use the AUTOTAG feature in Adobe Acrobat DC, sometimes it doesn’t embed all the fonts even if the fonts were embedded before?

I use the AUTOTAG when I get a file that is too messy, so instead of cleaning it up, I select the Autotag Document, and the tags are pretty accurate and most of the time much better than the original document. However, fonts that were originally embedded not always get embedded.

So, I had to do an extra step, and always review the properties to make sure fonts are embedded after running the Autotag. Most of the time they are not, so I have to fix this issue that wasn't an issue before using the Autotag.

Any idea of what is causing this issue? Or what is causing the fonts not being embedded anymore?

Thanks in advanace, Rosana

Report · Apr 13, 2018

I haven't seen that problem in our use of Autotag.

Questions:

Which fonts are missing from the PDF? Could be a licensing or embedability issue with certain fonts that won't allow you to embed them into PDFs and other digital formats without additional fees to the font manufacturer.
Are those fonts installed on your computer? If the font was on the original PDF creator's computer, but not on yours, Autotag might not be able to fully process the sections that are missing the fonts.

FYI, the newest version of Autotag in DC 2018 does an incredible job. On SOME documents, that is.

Our shop has found that if the PDF was created with old software or was poorly constructed in the source file (such as a sloppy InDesign file), then the results are less than stellar. Usually better than the original tagged PDF, but not great.

Report · Apr 16, 2018

Thanks for the feedback, see below my responses,

1. The original PDF has all the fonts embedded, only when using Autotag is when I get the font error. The Times-Roman is the missing font. It looks like it is being added???

2. If the fonts were originally embedded, it seems odd that when doing Autotag give this error with Times-Roman. Sometimes, the font missing is found in an Artifact item.
See attached screenshot of the same file before and after Autotag.

Thanks again.

Report · Apr 16, 2018

Before I verify the answer, a quick question:

Is the top screen capture the before or after?

And is the missing font the Times-Roman with the lowercase a icon that you've put the right box around?

Report · Apr 16, 2018

@rmc22, is there a chance you can share the original PDF and your autotagged version?

And also verify which platform you're on and which version of Acrobat was used, too (About Adobe Acrobat Pro DC version number at the top of the dialogue).

Can't attach files in this forum, so use DropBox or another cloud-based file exchange. Or email them directly to me.

Report · Apr 16, 2018

Top screenshot is before. Second screenshot is after (I added the red box to show the missing font that was added after AUTOTAG was used)

Adobe Acrobat DC version 18.011.20038 on PC

Thanks for looking into it!

Report · Apr 16, 2018

Thanks, Rosana.

I was able to replicate the situation on several PDFs that use non-OpenType fonts (old PS and TTF). Thank you and your eagle eyes for spotting the added Times-Roman (PS) font to the autotagged document.

I've passed this situation along to Adobe insiders, so give them a day or longer to diagnose the situation.

In the meantime, I've detected that this happens on PDFs using non-OpenType fonts. Two recommendations to you and others reading this:

In new documents, don't use old TrueType and PostScript fonts in your current documents. In 2000, the entire computer industry, worldwide, adopted the Unicode character set which built into all OpenType fonts. Many benefits to this, 2 critical ones are cross-platform compatability, and Unicode is required by our international accessibility standards.
In legacy PDFs that are being remediated for accessibility, let me get back to you after this is more thoroughly investigated. Personally, I don't think this will be a severe problem because the current glyphs in the document should be mapped to the other original fonts in the original document. Since Times-Roman (PS) wasn't used at all in the original document, most likely there aren't any characters/glyphs mapped to it.

Report · Apr 25, 2018

Thanks Bevi. Unfortunately, I usually do not have the source file, so I have to work only with the PDF the client sent.

Please let me know if the ADOBE insiders have provided any guidance on this issue.

Regards, Rosana

Report · Apr 26, 2018

As Bevi pointed out, this is definitely a problem. As an interim solution, have you tried running the embed fonts fix-up to re-embed the font in the document?

Report · Apr 30, 2018

Thanks Chad, yes I have been fixing the fonts when using Autotag. I am just curious if this is a known issue in Adobe.

Report · Apr 30, 2018

Adobe is aware of the problem and it's on their to-do list.

Can't tell when it will be corrected, but they know about it.

Keep an eye out for this in future releases. It's the type of fix that software companies don't broadcast "hey we fixed that bug!" It It will just appear in a new release.