Gabriel21949639jkih

Participating Frequently

Answered

Documents opening with incorrect fonts

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 26, 2021
10 replies
16644 views

Some of my pdf documents open with incorrect fonts, even though I have the fonts used to created the documents.

Example: I've received files sent to me in pdf where Arrial Narrow was used, but Acrobat opens them using Adobe Sans MM. When I print to that same document to pdf, they suddenly have the right font again. Any idea of what can cause something like this? It's a big pain and printing all my documents to pdf is not an option.

It's been happening with various files over the past 6 months and I've just not had the time to dig into the issue. I've uninstalled, reinstalled etc, but no luck.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Luke Jennings3

Adobe is fully updated and the MS Office is a licensed and up to date Office 365 package.

Why would Adobe be looking for Arral MT and give an Arial MT error if the font is actually supposed to be Arial Narrow?

The fonts missing from your PDF are ArialMT & Arial-BoldMT, as indicated by the document properties and the Output Preview Object Inspector tool, not Arial Narrow. Arial Narrow may be used by your computer as a substitute font. You could try to re-install MS Word (your original PDF was created in Word) which may install the needed fonts to your computer.

What is your OS? If Mac, you may need to clear your font cache.

From Acrobat, did you go to Help> Check for updates?

Megan36064970w6j0

Participant

I was having the same problem, and the solution from this other thread worked for me: Re-installing arial.ttf from the windows command prompt. https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/option-to-use-similar-system-font-or-error/td-p/13971827

Navigate to C:\Windows\Fonts, then execute arial.ttf

C:\Windows\Fonts>arial.ttf

Then install and voila.

Community Expert

Community Expert

It looks like a font issue, is Arial installed?

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Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

Yes, I'm using Arial fonts in all my other software packages and it's even listed as possible fonts in Adobe Acrobat...

Aleattin34952141xoo7

Participant

Its very annoying issue. I've same problem. We are waiting a urgent solution from ADOBE COMMUNITY.

Community Expert

Community Expert

Good news: the problem is elsewhere.

Your PDFs displays fine on my side, even with "Use local fonts" unchecked.

Be sure you have the Arial font installed.

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Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

But where is "elsewhere" ? I don't have this issue with any other software packages...

And how do I go about resolving this?

Community Expert

Community Expert

Can you share one of these PDFs?

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Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

In this file, look at the table on Page 4, Section 7 under cost breakdown. If I open that file in a browser, it also opens with the (supposedly correct) font.

Community Expert

Community Expert

"This is not a solution, because I surely cannot do this for every PDF I get sent"

Sure it is.

To solve your problem you just have to check the box that I indicated to you above, once and for all.

Why don't you give it a try first?

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Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

I tried it and it didn't resolve the problem.

Community Expert

Community Expert

"This is useful if you are creating the document, but doesn't help if you get sent a document."

No, it's the other way around.

This option is only useful for received documents.

When you create a document you must incorporate all the fonts to avoid this type of inconvenience to your correspondents.

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Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

This is not a solution, because I surely cannot do this for every PDF I get sent.

Can someone please mark that none of these are the correct answer and none of them have resolve the issue...

Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi guys, none of the suggestions thus far could resolve the issue. Please marked this as "Not resolved"

Community Expert

Community Expert

In addition to the good information above, when saving a Word file to PDF, be sure to embed the fonts, here is a link to instructions:

https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/how-to/convert-word-to-pdf.html

If you have a PDF without embedded fonts, you can often embed the fonts using an Acrobat preflight profile, here is a related discussion:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/embedded-font/m-p/12203259

Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

This is useful if you are creating the document, but doesn't help if you get sent a document.

Community Expert

Community Expert

Have you tried embedding the fonts using a preflight fixup?

Tools> Print Production> Preflight> PDF fixups. If your PDF is still not displaying correctly, it's possible the needed font is not on your system and cannot be embedded. To check your PDF fonts, go to File> Properties> Fonts, all should say embedded or embedded subset.

Community Expert

Community Expert

You will find confirmation in File menu : Properties

This is typical of PDFs made with Powerpoint (but I don't know why).

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Community Expert

Community Expert

This is because these fonts are not embedded in the document.

Acrobat does not use system fonts to display documents unless explicitly instructed.

You must enable this option to see documents correctly displayed:

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Gabriel21949639jkihAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi, this box was ticked, so this wasn't the issue.