HELP! Text turned to boxes with x's through them

[Madeline31785399irdi]

Hi all,

The text on my adobe acrobat PDF i am working on turned into this! Let me know how i can fix this.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

The "tofu" boxes with X indicate that the fonts used in the original source file (such as in MS Word) were not embedded into the PDF when it was exported.

Three solutions:

1. Figure out which fonts are missing in the PDF and install them on your computer. You can view the PDF's fonts in File / Properties / Fonts tag.
2. Return to the original source file (MS Word or something else), and re-export the document to PDF, this time checking the options to embed all fonts.
3. You can try to force-embed the fonts into the PDF with Acrobat's built-in Preflight utility, but you may or may not have the original fonts on your computer to do that.

See detailed instructions in this other post: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/scrambled-text-when-viewing-pdf-documents-in-acro...

[Lisa27275313b19x]

I had the same thing happen, but it was a PDF that I had edited, adding text boxes, and then I scanned pages into the end of the document and all of the text turned to "tofu" boxes.  Is there a way to prevent this?  I was using Courier Std or another regular text font.

[Dawn33168716mn47]

This is crazy. Getting the same issue with boxes. Every since last week when we got a message in Acrobat stating: Type 1 fonts will no longer be supported starting 2023. Your document contains Type 1 fonts. We get PDF files most of the time from our clients and Arial MT/Courier New SOMETIMES comes over with those boxes but always EMBEDDED. How is this possible????? I can remap font in PDF but need to know why this is happening. I also tried to Repair Installation and think it did it but not positive. HELP! LOL

[S. S]

Hi @Dawn33168716mn47,

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for your experience with Acrobat!

We released an update that contained a fix for this issue with rendering Type 1 fonts(ver. 2024.003.20054). Would you mind updating the application to the latest version and letting us know if that worked?

Also, if these are not Type1 and you still see the issue, please share a screenshot of the view you see and the Document Properties-> Font tab, so we can get it checked.

-Souvik

[S. S]

Hello Everyone, 

We are live with the next release(2024.003.20112).

Please update the app to the latest version and let us know if the issue is fixed.

Thanks,

Souvik

[dca_]

Hello! I am getting this issue and when I check for updates it says there are none and that version (24.005.20320) is installed. I am getting this issue when I copy text from a google doc. Any thing I can do? Thank you!

[dca_]

Attached are screenshots of the font in document properties. This PDF started off with Atlas Grotesk but it said that wasn't available (i am creating from a previous document) so i am using Adobe Gothic Std B, Adobe Fan Heiti Std B and minion pro. The font I am copying from the google doc is Arial

[John24472726qybf]

I'm having this issue running Illustrator 2024 (because 2025 is still too buggy to run on my Mac) when saving a file to PDF. When I open the PDF in Acrobat, all of the numbers in the font and any spaces show up as a box with an X. The font is the Adobe font, Gotham. It's an Adobe font, activated in the Adobe fonts in Creative Cloud, and it is still having these issues in Adobe products.