Italic/Bold Adobe Fonts aren't Embedded in PDFS

Report · Jun 23, 2023

I have been using Adobe's Creative Cloud fonts for numerous professional documents, and whenever I use Adobe's PDF conversion in Acrobat Pro, only the Book/regular version is embedded. This results in serious issues with italics, which are ugly and often run into quotation marks. I have all the fonts enabled in CC, but this is a persistent problem. I can save as PDF in Word, but this results in massive file sizes. My issue happens whether I use Adobe Acrobat or the Acrobat Word extension.

Report · Jun 23, 2023

Hi @Greg23792377vvmm ,

I can think of 3 issues that might prevent fonts (or some of the fonts) from being embedded into the PDF as you export it from MS Word/Office 365.

1. The conversion settings as you export the PDF.

Here's a step-by-step tutorial on the different ways to export a PDF from Word. https://www.pubcom.com/blog/tutorials/ms-office/export-pdf/index.shtml Look at Method A and check if your font settings look like the sample in the fonts screen capture.

2. Your computer doesn't have the italics or bold weights installed in the C:/Windows/Fonts folder.

Check the folder on your computer and ensure they're there.

3. Your fonts aren't licensed for embedding into PDFs and other digital file formats.

Not all fonts automatically give this permission. Check the fonts' properties and see if they are embeddable, editable, or some other wording to that affect.

C:/Windows/Fonts and right-click on the font to check.
Select Properties.
Select the Details tab at the top.
Look for words like embeddable, editable, editable embeddable, etc. If it says restricted or limited, then that font can't be embedded into the PDF. This setting is controlled by the font manufacturer, not Adobe or Microsoft.

Check if the font can be embedded.

Let us know what you discover.

Report · Jun 23, 2023

Unfortunately, these steps didn't work. These are fonts that are added via Adobe Creative Cloud and are Adobe's fonts, which is why this is so frustrating. They are not saved in C:\Windows\Fonts but part of Adobe Creative Cloud. These fonts are specifically marketed as embeddable in PDFs, and the Regular (but not bold or italic) subsets embed fine (but only if I use the Adobe Word Add-in or "Create a PDF" in Adobe Acrobat. This feels like a bug in Adobe's Creative Cloud or PDF generator, but it's such a serious one that I'm shocked it hasn't been fixed.

Report · Jun 23, 2023

Another update, the issue appears to be that my font (FreightText Pro Book) does not properly use the bold version (FreightText Pro Bold) unless it's changed manually (not with the bold/italic toggles). If I go through my documents and run a find and replace to change to the bold font, each of the fonts embeds properly. This isn't a reasonable solution though because I am paying for the bold and bold italic versions of the font, and they should work properly in Word/be associated with each other appropriately.