TimesNewRomanPSMT (also ArialMT and other fonts) error message

Question

Hello everybody.

Our company uses Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word (2016) and Adobe Acrobat to create PDF files. In Word we use Times New Roman as font (sometimes Arial), and create PDF files by the Acrobat tab (Standard settings; Base14 fonts not embedded).

During the last months (some say since years) many users (>100 people) sometimes encounter an issue, which gets more and more annoying, as it occurs seemingly more often: When opening a PDF file, sometimes an error message is displayed which indicates that the font TimesNewRomanPSMT (or ArialMT) could not be found and some characters might not be displayed correct. As a result the content is not displayed. Closing the document and re-opening the file solves in most cases this issue: no error message, and the content is properly displayed. In very rare cases the same error message is displayed when re-opening the PDF, and re-re-opening the document solves it again (or re-re-re-opening, and so on....). The error message is displayed in PDF files created earlier (e.g in 2013, with Windows 7, Office 2010 and an earlier version of Acrobat Pro) and also in PDF files created today.

Crazily: in most cases (> 90%) there is no error message when opening the same PDF file. Everything works fine, no display errors, no error message. On the next day (same document, same computer, same user) the error message can appear again. From what I can see there is no logical behavior.

As far as I understood fonts in Windows, Office and Acrobat: Times New Roman and TimesNewRomanPSMT (also Arial and ArialMT) are identical, once referenced with an internal name, once with an external name. No font substitution is necessary. When there is no error message, the font tab in the PDF document properties indicates no font substitution. When the error message appears, there is a font substitution indicated (TimesNewRomanPSMT is substituted by Times New Roman, ArialMT is is substituted by Arial). Seems weird for me, that in one case the font can be found and in some cases not.

My questions are:

1) Why does this error message appear in some cases?
2) Is there something I can adjust when creating the PDF?
3) What is the technical background of this message - or is it a bug (within which software)?

Reading earlier posts in this or other support communities, these posts always deal with embedding all fonts. But as both Times New Roman and Arial are Base14 fonts (and embedding them eliminates the error messages, but is kind of counter conceptional to Base14 fonts) there is no need for embedding: we want to keep the files as small in byte size as possible.

We use

Microsoft Windows 10 (1903), Build 18362.778, 64 Bit
Microsoft Word 2016, Build 16.0.4993.1001, 32 Bit
Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, 2015 Version (Classic), 2015.006.30518, 32 Bit

Seems to me that posting 10611306 describes a similar problem; "Use local fonts" is ticked in my preferences (deafault for our company).

Many thanks for reading the whole post 🙂 and for any suggestion or solution.

Best

--

Dietmar

Please apologize any typo or misleading wording, as English is not my native language

Dov Isaacs · Accepted Answer

This has been an ongoing issue over the years. A few instances have been found to be due to bugs in Acrobat (in reading PDF files) that we have tried to address as quickly as possible with QFE patch releases. Please make sure your copies of Acrobat are indeed updated to the most recent release.

Assuming that you haven't hit one of those fixed Acrobat bugs, the problems typically have to do with unembedded fonts.

Some considerations:

(1) You mention the Use local fonts option. That should obviously be enabled as it appears you are doing.

(2) Errors of the form you are encountering generally have to do with unembedded fonts possibly in combination with missing or improper mapping tables within the PDF file.

(3) Contrary to popular perception, neither Arial, Times New Roman, nor Courier New (or any members of these families) are the actual Base14 fonts of the PDF specification. The actual Base14 fonts were four styles each of the Type 1 Helvetica, Times, and Courier along with the Symbol and ITC Zapf Dingbats fonts that previously shipped with Adobe PostScript Level 2 printers as well as with very early releases of Acrobat. Arial, Times, etc. are so-called “system fonts” that are often used as substitutes for the real Base14 fonts when they aren't embedded but are referenced in a PDF file. To be very clear, although the “advance widths” for the ASCII characters of Arial and Times New Roman mimick those of Helvetica and Times fonts, the fonts are absolutely not the same design and have some incompatibilities!!

(4) PDF creators often by default don't embed Arial, Times, and other so-called system fonts in an effort to minimize the size of the resultant PDF files.

(5) There are many versions of Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, and other so-called system fonts that differ from version to version (and update to update) of Windows and between MacOS and Windows! The difference include not only the glyph complement, but also the encodings. For example, the original version of Arial shipped with Windows 3.1 had fewer than 256 glyph definitions. The most recent version (7.00) of Arial that is available in Windows 10 1909 has 4503 distinct glyph definitions! Similar issues affect Times New Roman. Thus, you cannot assume that a PDF file with unembedded Arial et.al. will properly be able to access all glyphs referenced in that file using a host-resident font.

(6) Due to these problems, the Standard joboptions shipping with Acrobat versions for over a year now unconditionally embed all referenced fonts. Yes, the PDF files are marginally larger (note that the vast majority of PDF files reference relatively few glyphs in any font and subset embedding assures that unnecessary glyph definitions are not embedded in a PDF file). If you are using a version of Acrobat that hasn't yet been updated with these new Standard joboptions, make your own version that subset embeds all fonts referenced in the PDF file being created.

(7) Be aware that all the PDF subset standards for long term / reliable PDF creation - PDF/X for blind exchange and printing as well as PDF/A for archiving require that all fonts referenced be embedded in the PDF file.

Bottom Line – Always, repeat always, repeat yet again always subset embed all fonts referenced in a PDF file to assure to no problems in opening PDF files, regardless of the platform that they are being viewed on (and whatever fonts are native to said platform).

PS: Your English is excellent!

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