Font display in Acrobat Pro DC

[Des26750829p543]

I have a client with Acrobat Pro DC on her desktop. She receives PDFs from external entities and some of these do not display on her PC correctly - some text is shown in a different font like WingDings.

She doesn’t have Reader on the PC, but another PDF viewer - in that app, the files display correctly. Similarly, I had her email me some examples, and they display correctly in Reader on a PC here.

I ran PreFlight and checked the font status there - it looks like the embedded Arial is slightly different than that on her PC (Windows 10) - PreFlight shows Arial with a numbered suffix.

I'd like to understand why this happens when the fonts display OK in Reader on a different PC, and, more importantly, how this can be resolved.

Thanks,

Des

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

From your description, it sounds like the failing PDFs don't have the fonts embedded into it.

Note:

When fonts are not embedded into the PDF, each computer that reads it will need to have those same fonts installed on the computer in order to correctly image the PDF on the screen.

If the computer doesn't have the fonts, the PDF will appear with character errors, blanks, "tofu" white blocks, odd characters like dingbats and accented characters, circles, dots, and other crazy stuff.

You're seeing different results on different computers because each computer has a different set of fonts installed. Fonts available on one computer might be missing on another.

Best solution:

Return to the source file in the original software program.

Re-export a new PDF, this time checking the options to embed the fonts into the new PDF.

The new PDF should now image correctly on all computers, whether they have the fonts or not.

Next-best solution:

Force-Embed the fonts into the PDF with Adobe Acrobat DC Pro.

For instructions on how to do this, see the November 27, 2021 post in this discussion: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/words-and-letters-missing-after-exiting-and-reope...

[Des26750829p543]

Thanks for getting back to me. Your suggestion to force-embed the fonts didn’t help, but it did lead me to this post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/odd-character-fonts/m-p/10009104

This is exactly what I am seeing - Arial+000040 and similar font names. I'll talk to my client, but as these are coming from a third party, it may not be possible to make progress.

Regards,

Des

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

@Des26750829p543 

Glad you were able to diagnose the problem.

The post you referenced is from the best authority ever, Dov Isaacs, a now-retired Adobe engineer. He was central on the team that created this software (and other Adobe programs).

A bit a background of what Dov says in item #3 of his post marked Correct...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/odd-character-fonts/m-p/10009104

The PDF creator did not use accepted, standard practices for denoting the names of fonts, especially since these fonts were not embedded in the PDF file.

A PDF Creator or PDF Producer is software that creates the PDF from the source file. (No, it's not the human being!)

So if your font list has strange font names as described, it's a clue that:

1. A non-compliant PDF-making utility was used to create the PDF, and it didn't recognize the fonts correctly. The PDF Producer utility didn't follow the international standards of how PDF files should be encoded. (The standard is called ISO 32000 and defines how PDF files must be created.)
    
   So, crappy software was used to create the PDF. To prevent this type of error, see if you can have your organization, or your client, upgrade to better, more compliant software. Adobe software is still the best because they originally created the PDF file format; everyone else is now catching up. (And no, I am not paid by Adobe nor do I even own their stock, so I don't have any financial gain when you purchase their programs. Community Experts are invited volunteers to help on these forums.)
    
   To find out what that crappy software was, go to File / Properties, and under the Description tab, see what is listed for both Application (lists the source program, like Acrobat PDF Maker for Word, or Adobe InDesign) and PDF Producer (shows the actual utility that created the file, such as Adobe PDF Library).
    
   Once you know the software, ban it from your organization! <grin>  There are other non-Adobe brands of PDF Producer software that do a better job than others.
    
2. At the time the PDF was made, the user didn't embed the fonts into the PDF. To prevent this in the future, teach your staff and clients how to embed the fonts. It's just a mouseclick or two.

Glad you got some resolution on this perplexing problem! Best to you...

[Silvano26885079rotr]

Thanks for the follow-up. The PDFs coem from a third party and, although they are readable in Acrobat Reader on another PC, it is, as you said, related to the fonts used at the creation side, where my client has no influence. 

Thanks for you help on this - at least the issue is understood by the client.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Glad to help.