Embedded font but still garbled text

Hello, 

Sorry for the delayed response, I assume you may have already found an answer to your question.

Thanks for sharing the issue — even though fonts are embedded, garbled text can still occur due to encoding mismatches, partial embedding, or missing system fonts during export or viewing.

• You can use Preflight under Tools > Print Production to inspect the fonts used and verify whether they are subset or fully embedded. 

• If the PDF came from a third-party tool, re-exporting it using Acrobat with full font embedding enabled might help.

More reasons:

1. Embedded Fonts ≠ Standard Text Encoding

    

   • Even if fonts are embedded, the text layer may use custom encoding or be mapped through font glyph IDs rather than Unicode.

   • When exporting, Acrobat or any PDF parser may not interpret this encoding correctly, resulting in gibberish or scrambled characters.

    

2. Fonts Are Embedded as Subsets

    

   • Subset fonts often embed only specific glyphs (characters used in the document) with non-standard character maps, making exported output unreadable or inconsistent.

    

3. Font Doesn’t Support Unicode Mapping

    

   • Some fonts (especially decorative or proprietary ones) lack proper Unicode mappings, so exported text can’t be matched to readable characters.

    

4. PDF was Generated Improperly

    

   • If the source PDF was created by a print-to-PDF tool or scanner and used image-based text with OCR, or improperly encoded text layers, export tools may misinterpret the content.

    

If the file is scanned document, check this out: https://adobe.ly/3F31PtH;