Errors with some fonts

Report · Sep 20, 2024

Hi,

A person from our company keeps encountering font errors such as Helvetica, Arial-BOLDMT, and TimesNewRomanPSMT when opening certain PDFs in Acrobat Pro. The specific error example is: "Cannot find or create the font 'Helvetica'. Some characters may not display or print correctly. A drawing error occurred." This issue persists even after updating Acrobat to the latest patch. See screenshot below for reference.

To address the font issue, I added a custom font service in the Admin Console. I uploaded the missing fonts to the cloud and added both myself and the affected users to the custom font product profile. This solution appears to require Creative Cloud to be installed on the affected users' machines, so the missing fonts can be embedded in Acrobat. However, no other features should be visible or accessible to the users except for the font functionality.

I was able to lock "Apps" and "Discover" by modifying the serviceConfig.xml file at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\OOBE\Configs\ServiceConfig.xml", but I couldn't lock other features. I reached out to Adobe support, and they mentioned this could be considered a feature request. The red-circled areas in the screenshot are the ones I would like to either lock or make invisible, if possible.

Does anyone have an alternative solution to tackle this problem, or could this feature be added to future releases? I would greatly appreciate any feedback.

Thanks!

Subject edited for clarity. Was "The ability to disable certain features from Creative Cloud Desktop app."

Report · Sep 21, 2024

@Gedeon301723798c5g

I've moved your post from Creative Cloud Desktop for you.

What version (exact) of Acrobat are you using?

Jane

Report · Sep 21, 2024

I think you might be going to deep on this.

First of all, in the affected PDFs, are fonts embedded? Check the document's Properties > Fonts. If any of those fonts do not have (Embedded Subset) after each name, the fonts are not embedded, in which case they are looking for them from your System. Since the ones you are mentioning are likely old Type 1 Postscript outlines, I suspect it's because they are no longer supported and aren't typically on newer OSs. It was pretty common to not embed them in "the olden days", and Acrobat used to have these base fonts built in, but since the deprecation, that is no longer the case. That being said, failing finding the corrcect fonts, the PDF would have defaulted to using the generic Adobe Sans/Serif MM fallback fonts, so I guess it depends

Can you share one of the PDFs?

Report · Sep 27, 2024

Brad @ Roaring Mouse and @jane-e , thank you for your help. Please see my last message below.

Report · Sep 27, 2024

Hi @Gedeon301723798c5g

Is this happening for one person or to multiple users with same set of files.

Can you share a few sample files for investigation.

If this is happening for one user and working fine for others, can you please check the app version on his machine

Regards

Ravi

Report · Sep 27, 2024

The user is using Acrobat Pro 24.002.20933 and is permitted to check for updates from the Help menu and install them. Due to the sensitivity of the PDF, I’m unable to share the documents. However, I have provided screenshots of the documents' font properties, which might help clarify the issue, as some fonts are embedded while others are not.

That being said, I am unable to replicate the pop-up on my machine. So far, only one user has reported encountering this font error popup.

Thank you!

Report · Sep 27, 2024

How are the PDFs created? Are they quite old? Directly exported from a program (which?), or printed to a PDF driver, or...? If the former, which program?

"So far, only one user has reported encountering this font error popup"

Since the fonts were not embedded, the PDF is relying on those fonts being available on the System to display. That one user apparently does not have them, hence the error. What OS is that user using? i.e. Mac or PC.

When they open up the + sign beside one of the unemebbed fonts, what does it say for "Actual font"?

You could try fix the file by attempting to re-embed the fonts by using Acrobat's Preflight tool, assuming YOU have the fonts available. Worth a try.

Report · Sep 27, 2024

Brad @ Roaring Mouse , I will try the Preflight tool to see if it makes a difference. The affected user is receiving various PDFs from different individuals, such as contracts, letters, etc. I'm not entirely sure which program they are using. I'll gather more details from our user and circle back once I have more information.

Thank you so much! Your help on this issue has been extremely helpful. I truly appreciate your support.