Documents opening with incorrect fonts

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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.

[JR Boulay]

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:

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

Can someone please "unselect" this as the correct answer, because it's not the correct answer and doesn't solve my problem...

[JR Boulay]

You will find confirmation in File menu : Properties

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

[Luke Jennings3]

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

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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

[Luke Jennings3]

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.

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

Are you seriously expecting that I need to do this for all documents that are sent to me?

I've also mentioned before that the fonts that come out incorrectly are common fonts that are available in the PDF when I click on edit.

Example: It changed the font from Arrial Narrow to Adobe Sans MM, even though I have Arrial Narrow as a font.

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

If I open that section of PDF fixup, it looks exactly the same as the image that you've shared. What do I need to change to correct the issue that I'm experiencing.

I've picked up that if I mail this same document to someone else, it displays correctly on their side, so it's not an error with the file itself.

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

This is what I get when running that fixup...

[Luke Jennings3]

When I run the preflight on my Mac, the fonts in your PDF are properly embedded. I believe ArialMT is a Microsoft font, it's probably not working for you because ArialMT is not on your computer.

You could try the preflight shown on this screen shot, however, you will likely get the same error.

FYI, if the preflight did work, you could add it to an Acrobat action which would allow you to easily apply it to a PDF or a folder of PDFs. You don't need to apply it to every PDF, only the PDFs that have unembedded fonts.

Is your Acrobat fully updated? Do you have MS Office installed? 

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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?

[Luke Jennings3 · Accepted solution]

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?

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

Thanks, this finally resolved the issue. The thing that was very confusing is that other people were picking up the Arial Narrow font, so I assumed that this was the correct font, when in fact it was looking for the Arial MT font.

[Luke Jennings3]

Glad it's working for you now.

What did you do to finally fix it? I'd really like to know.

BTW,  your 2nd PDF sample showed two versions of ArialMT (Ansi encoded & Identity-H encoded). The person creating the PDFs needs to read my earlier link about creating PDFs from Word, if they had made the PDF correctly, all fonts would likely be embedded and there would be no issue.

Also, I would use the preflight fixup to embed the font, if you can, to insure correct output, even if it is displaying and printing correctly from your computer.

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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

[JR Boulay]

"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.

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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...

[JR Boulay]

"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?

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

Please see my previous response. Those boxes were already ticked and unticked as per your suggestion. Chaning those didn't resolve my issue.

[JR Boulay]

Can you share one of these PDFs?

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

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. 

[Gabriel21949639jkih]

Here's another one....