Two users, same version of Acrobat Pro DC and Word, PDF same doc, get different font size in PDF

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 18, 2021
2 replies
919 views

I have two users who have the same version of Acrobat Pro DC and MS Word; their respective font sets in C:\Windows\fonts\ are the same.

Using PDFMaker, when one user PDFs a Word file with an 11-point font (as defined by a paragraph style), the PDF has an 11.2-point font; the other user's version is 11.04 points when the PDF the same file. (On my machine, same apps/versions as the other users, I get 11.04 points.)

Can anyone shed any light on why this might be happening? Our client is incredibly discerning and cares about this very minor discrepancy in the documents we provide; it is not feasible to have only one user create the PDFs.

General troubleshooting

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Test Screen Name

Legend

Compare the installed printers (or at least the current printer in Word). Word uses the printer to make decisions about font and layout. It really isn't a tool for standardised layout!

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hans_pnwAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks, roaringmousegraphics and Test Screen Name, for your responses. We're all on Win10. I'll check to see if there's any scaling (shouldn't be), and I'll have both users set their printer drivers to the same one and retest. I knew that drivers cause pagination issues, e.g., one user sees a doc with x pages and another sees the same doc with x + 1, but I always assumed that that had to do with the area of a page on which a printer can print.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Word has its own way of storing font sizes internally; externally, we may see 11 point in the font menu, but internally it might be stored as a number of whatever measurement system Word is built upon, and only to a certain number of decimal places, so when it's actually converted back to print output/PDF, the math to convert it back to points may cause a miniscule increase or decrease accordingly. This will happen to almost any type size you specify in Word, except anything divisible by 6 (try it).

Adobe products (and Acrobat) have more accurate measuring, so will display the difference.

There is nothing you can do about this...it's just the way it works.

And there is literally nothing your clients need to worry about.

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hans_pnwAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I now understand the very small differences in font size when comparing a Word file to a PDF! However, I'm unclear on why one user's 11-point in Word is 11.2 points in Acrobat, while two other users' PDFs are 11.04. I recognize that the difference is small, but our editors are noticing it (hence this forum post), and that means, unfortunately, our client will, too. Thanks.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

If there is any horizontal or vertical scaling on the text, that affects how it is interpreted in a PDF

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