Font Encoding settings - Removing Identity-H encoding

[RuDizzle88]

Hi all,

I use a Mail Merge function daily to print letters in Bulk from Microsoft Word using Adobe PDF.

As soon as I changed laptops (went from Windows 7 to Windows 10) the Fonts in the PDF's are now encoded with "Identity-H" with a font type of  "Truetype (CID)" instead of "Truetype" with ANSI encoding which means none of the characters in the address box can be read by Bing Mailroom in order to extract the address text and mail them out in bulk.

I've spent a couple of days trying to fix it and playing around with all the relevant settings/preferences in Adobe PDF, Distiller and Word but nothing seems to work.

Any ideas?

[Eric Dumas]

Have you asked Bing Mailroom tech support if you can use a seprate set of fonts or some work around they suggest?

[RuDizzle88]

Hi Eric, just done that today! As per Dov's answer above, I think we'll need to get a new font which is more restrictive in the number of glyphs they support on Windows 10. Cheers!

[ls_rbls]

Adding to the discussion,

When you tried to change settings in your adobe acrobat preferences, did you unchecked "use local fonts" option?

Also, I believe it is possible to update the fonts library in both  windows and from witihin the MS Office applications.

Aside from the upgrade to Windows 10 from Win7, did you also updated your Adobe Acrobat to refelct the current version?

Last, if all suggestions here have failed try these recommendations too:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/Acrobat/There-s-something-wrong-with-my-Adobe-PDF-viewer-it-can-t-rea...

[RuDizzle88]

Yes, I've tried unchecking local fonts but that didn;t work.

[RuDizzle88]

The version of Adobe remained the same as well. Thanks for the suggestion about updating the font library, I've sent that through to the Bing Mailroom tech to see if he can identify any non-standard fonts that might work. Cheers! 😄

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

There is no method of eliminating use of CID Identity-H encoding when creating PDF files. Such encoding is perfectly valid per the PDF specification. It is often used when large character sets are used or non-ASCII characters are referenced. There are absolutely no settings in any Adobe preferences or options to avoid this encoding. Furthermore, any software that is attempting to interpret text within a PDF file should be able to deal with such encoding. It seems like this “Bing Mailroom” software is making very poor assumptions about the PDF files that it will need to interpret. You should contact that company's tech support to get a fix from them for their software.

You did mention your transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10. One of the major changes that most users are not aware of is that in the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8.x to Windows 10, the system fonts within Windows (such as Arial, Times New Roman, etc.) grew dramatically in size in terms of the numbers of glyphs defined in those fonts (to support more languages, special symbolic characters, etc.). When encountering such fonts, some if not most PDF generators will use CID Identity-H encoding. The only thing you might try is use of other fonts that are much more restricted in the number of glyphs they support, probably meaning that you may need to license fonts other than the Windows system fonts.

              - Dov

[RuDizzle88]

Hi Dov, thanks for your expertise! I've passed this through to the Bing mailroom Tech and hopefully they can identify a font which is more restrictive in the number of glyphs they support on Windows 10 which might do the trick

[Cesar Cesanjjaque]

Bonjour,

I don't understand what is the advantage of Identity-H encoding. For our caritative association, we have a small news paper of one page, since the beginning of this publication except the one page text, the fonts and the logo image was not changed and depending of the evolution of the means of creation we have 3 types of pdf files.  

Except the size, the aspect of the pdf on screen or on printer is exactly the same !

The 3 types are describe here :

• Type 1 : size ~ 73 ko
  

          Creator: PDFCreator Version 1.7.3
          Producer: GPL Ghostscript 9.10
          CreationDate: Mon Oct 29 13:45:36 2016
          Pages: 1
          Encrypted: no
          File size: 73564 bytes
          Optimized: no
          PDF version: 1.4
CalibriLight,Italic          TrueType  WinAnsi  
CalibriLight                   TrueType  WinAnsi 
Calibri                            TrueType  WinAnsi 
BrushScriptMT,Italic     TrueType  WinAnsi 
HarlowSolidItalic,Italic TrueType  WinAnsi
Calibri,Bold                   TrueType  WinAnsi

• Type 2 : size ~ 530 ko
  Creator: Microsoft Word 2010
  Producer: Microsoft® Word 2010
  CreationDate: Tue Nov 26 12:04:31 2019
  Pages: 1
  Encrypted: no
  File size: 524766 bytes
  Optimized: no
  PDF version: 1.5

Calibri Light                      TrueType WinAnsi 
Calibri Light CID              TrueType Identity-H 
Calibri                                TrueType WinAnsi 
Forte                                   TrueType WinAnsi 
Harlow Solid Italic,Italic   TrueType WinAnsi 
Calibri,Bold                       TrueType WinAnsi

Calibri,Bold                       TrueType WinAnsi 
Calibri CID                        TrueType Identity-H 
Calibri,Bold CID               TrueType Identity-H 
Arial                                   TrueType WinAhyugtnsi 
Arial Rounded MT Bold    TrueType WinAnsi 
Calibri Light,Italic              TrueType WinAnsi 
Calibri Light,Italic CID      TrueType Identity-H 

• Type 3 : size ~ 860 ko
  producer : Microsoft Print to PDF
  CreationDate: Tue Apr 14 10:47:08 2020
  Pages: 1

          Encrypted: no
          File size: 865094 bytes
          Optimized: no
         PDF version: 1.7
CIDFont+F1 CID     TrueType Identity-H
CIDFont+F2 CID     TrueType Identity-H
CIDFont+F3 CID     TrueType Identity-H
CIDFont+F4 CID     TrueType Identity-H 
CIDFont+F5 CID     TrueType Identity-H 
CIDFont+F6 CID     TrueType Identity-H 
CIDFont+F7 CID     TrueType Identity-H 
CIDFont+F8 CID     TrueType Identity-H 

Is there are a solution to reduce this INVASIVEIdentity-H encoding ?

Thank for answers !

Bests Regards.

[Dov Isaacs]

@Cesar Cesanjjaque

A few points:

(1)    There is nothing “invasive” about Identity-H encoding. DIfferent PDF creators use this encoding based upon which characters in a font are actually used, typically when non-ASCII or Western Latin characters (such as any symbolic characters are used. There is no penalty in terms of your ability to view, print, search, or even edit such PDF files.

(2)    There is no feature within Acrobat Pro, including within the Preflight functions, to eliminiate existing Identity-H encoding.

(3)    None of the three methods of producing PDF that you give examples for are Adobe products or have anything to do with Adobe Acrobat's PDF creation capability. The second and third PDF files you reference are produced via Microsoft's tools, neither of which are highly regarded in terms of the quality or efficiency of their PDF production. You should contact Microsoft to ascertain why their PDF files are so bloated in size. It is not the CID Identity-H encoding, though!

(4)    Something else is inconsistent here. Apparently different fonts are being embedded in the PDF files. There is an inconsistency well beyond what encoding is used.