How can fonts that are embedded be missing when opening the file in another program

Report · Oct 12, 2021

I have a problem that when I create a PDF file (a graph) made in the program GraphPad Prism and open it in Adobe Illustrator, the degree sign is replaced with a cross inside a box. This part of the problem is not surprising and may be due to that the font is lacking. However, if I instead open it in Adobe Pro 2017 everything looks good and the degree sign looks normal.

I was then thinking that if I embed all the fonts (using the Preflight option) in Adobe Acrobat Pro and then save it again, it should be possible to open in Adobe Illustrator. The fixup went smoothly and everything looked fine with no error messages. I also confirmed the fixup by going to Document properties where I could see that both Arial and Symbol were embedded. I then went to Adobe Illustrator again and then got the error message that the Arial font is missing and will be replaced by Myriad Pro (the Symbol font was not even mentioned). Now the graph looked even worse than before with the degree sign still replaced and the font of the axes also changed. I am then wondering what is really happening at the font embedding step. If the font is embedded, why does Illustrator say that it is not there?

Report · Oct 12, 2021

Illustrator is not a general PDF editor. So it's to be expected that sometimes when you open a PDF in Illustrator it doesn't have all the things you want. This seems such an ideal solution. But it isn't.

Report · Oct 12, 2021

Does it mean that only true PDF editors can read embedded fonts? I though embedding the fonts was a way to make the file readable for everyone.

A follow up question is if there is a way to save the PDF file so that I know that it is not misread by others. The reason why I am wondering is that I want to submit a figure as part of a publication to a journal and editable PDF files is a one of the formats they accept. Is the only option to convert the text to glyphs and if so, how is it done in Adobe Acrobat Pro?

Best, Anders