Converting Word files to PDF compresses/expands/changes fonts
- December 15, 2023
- 1 reply
- 1277 views
Setup first:
Windows 11 Enterprise
Acrobat Pro v 2023.006.20380, 64-bit
Microsoft Word v 16.0.16924.20150
Now the issue:
When I convert from Word to PDF (using "Publish as PDF/XPS Document" because it sets the PDF up best for compliance with federal accessibility standards), Acrobat will mangle the fonts if the document contains pages of mixed orientation (portrait/landscape) and size (letter AND tabloid - both sizes must be present to recreate the errors). Although I chiefly use "Publish as PDF/XPS" to convert, it also occurs when using all other methods except "Print to PDF," which I cannot use because this method fails to bring over any information for accessibility (like tags). I have all conversion settings set to embed all fonts, and I've also copied all the fonts in the embed list from "Font Source" to "Always Embed" to hedge my bets.
On either the letter or tabloid landscape pages, fonts will either be thinned out, resized, and widely spaced or compressed and overlapping. Acrobat chooses which page size to destroy arbitrarily; sometimes tabloid pages look great while letter pages look terrible, or vice versa.
If I choose a single page or set of pages (of the same size and orientation) to PDF separately, the issue does not occur. It only occurs when I try to convert an entire Word document to PDF, so I generally need to re-PDF the bad pages and insert them into the PDF, which loses any TOC or cross-reference linking for those pages.
Does anyone have any advice for how to fix this? I PDF thousands of Word documents each year and am finding it very irritating to correct this by PDFing single pages and replacing them. A suggestion I found to embed all fonts worked for about a week and then the issue reappeared. Using preflight to "embed missing fonts" also did not work for any PDFs with the issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
