Indentifying fonts in Properties

[sPretzel]

Hi,

Is there a way to identify the objects that yield a font entry in File>Properties>Fonts? By identifying, I mean to find out at least the page number, if not the object itself, that produces that entry. Preflight does that but I have a hard time correlating some Properties>Fonts entries with the information I see in Preflight. Unfortunately, the information in Properties>Fonts is very limited.

Thanks.

[Dov Isaacs]

There is no built-in method to search for objects based on font (or any other attribute). Since this is a very good idea for a product enhancement, you might want to submit that idea at https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac  which is monitored by Acrobat's development team.

In the meantime, you could conceivably write some complex Javascript or an Acrobat plug-in to perform this type of function but mind you, it would not be simple.

            - Dov

[sPretzel]

Hi Dov,

Thanks for your response. My problem arises from the fact that I have several entries in Properties>Fonts that are identical (exactly the same information). I would have liked to find out what page(s) of the document they appear on and preferably what type objects they relate to. Preflight gives this information but doesn't tell me what entry in Properties>Fonts the entry in Preflight corresponds to. So I am scratching my head! Perhaps if the entry in Properties>Fonts was more detailed, it would help.

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

There may be “identical” entries in that Properties=>Fonts panel, but what they represent are multiple, different subsets of what is (hopefully) the same original font. Unfortunately, in order for that panel to be augmented in the manner you propose, it would be necessary to not only scan for font resources, but to parse and interpret all text objects in the PDF file, a potentially very time consuming function. That panel was designed to be only a cursory overview of what fonts are used in the PDF file, not to provide the detailed information you are looking for, which by the way really also requires more identification of the particular font subset information to be useful to you.

              - Dov

[sPretzel]

Thanks Dov. I agree. For my problem, I have been trying to understand why two almost identical documents have in one case two font entries (of a given type) in Properties>Fonts and in the other case, three such font entries. I was expecting both documents to have the same number of font entries (of that type) and was investigating to find out what is causing this and if I may have accidentally left an extra instance of the font in the first document somewhere. Still investigating...

[Dave Merchant]

If you are trying to find font scraps in a document you have created, then go look in the software you used to write it. InDesign, Word, etc. all have search tools that filter for specific typefaces and styles.

[sPretzel]

Hi Dave. I've looked in Preflight already and did not see anything suspicious. Your suggestion is a good one too. But left-overs are one possibility, perhaps the root cause is elsewhere, I don't know.

[sPretzel]

What is even more puzzling is that the first document has two font entries (of a given type), the second document has three font entries of the same type (by type, I mean that all the details for the font are the same in Properties>Fonts). When I merge the two documents, the merged document has only one font entry of that type!