Fonts show up as squares like they're missing but they're not.

[Martin28781012ieqh]

I have a client who gets medical records mailed to them on CD's. When they open the file direct from the disk into Acrobat. Some fonts. From what I can tell it's Ariel, shows up and various size squares. 

Now I can edit the page, change the font from Ariel, or another and back, then it will show up fine. 

I can also open this pdf in a browser (chrome and Edge have been tested) and the font will show up just fine. I can also "print to pdf" from browser and open the file in Acrobat and the same thing happens. I have tested on multiple computers as well.

What is going on and how do I fix this?

[Pegeen29624021231v]

Happening here too. Have you found any solutions?

[Martin28781012ieqh]

Nope not yet.

[laurn_1858]

Hi, Martin. I am having the almost exact same issue as your client (re: Arial font in medical records displaying as squares); this issue has been ongoing for me, coworkers, and colleagues at other offices since 8/16/24, and seems to be related to the two most recent updates for Acrobat Pro (versions 2024.002.21005 and 2024.003.20054, respectively). After multiple chats with Adobe Technical Support, they said it's a bug on Adobe's end and they're working on it, and temporary solutions included rollback to older versions of Adobe or workaround fixes.

Rollbacks to older versions of Acrobat Pro fix the issue temporarily, (the records view and function normally with versions 2024.002.20991 or older), but the app updates itself regardless of what our IT techs have tried to disable and we're back to square one there. Suggested workarounds were printing to PDF and selecting 'Print as Image', and the preflight fixup 'Convert Fonts to Outlines' - for us, converting fonts to outlines fixed the Arial display issue in some files, but not all, and scan/OCR had to be redone. After much frustration and slowly working my way through many, many preflight fixups in an attempt to find a better temporary solution, I found a fixup that seems to correct the Arial display issue and retain OCR -  'Convert TrueType fonts to CID fonts' (and, 'Convert TrueType fonts to CFF fonts', although this does not look as clean for us).

So far, converting TrueType fonts to CID fonts has worked to correct the font display issues in every problem PDF we have right now. I hope this can help your client in the interim until Adobe finds a fix for us. 

[Tariq Ahmad Dar · Accepted solution]

Hi @Martin28781012ieqh @laurn_1858,

Sorry for the delayed response and the troubled experience. 
This was a known issue, and it was fixed with the September product update. Ensure Acrobat is updated to the latest version. To check for pending updates, launch Acrobat> Help > Check for Updates. 

If you’re still experiencing this issue, I encourage you to share any additional details or steps that led to it. This will assist us in diagnosing and fixing the issue more effectively.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to make things right.

~Tariq