Wingdings replacing courier text in old pdf

Report · Jul 10, 2023

A colleague is having a problem with a pdf containing 151 schematics for one of our buildings. The pdf was created in 2009 by the architectural firm hired for the renovation. When she opens the file, the information section for each page has been replaced by wingdings. She sent the file to me to review. I opened it on a mac and pc. I have the same issue that she did. I use Adobe Acrobat Pro and she uses Reader. I do not get an error message when I open the file. When I highlight the wingdings, the font is listed as courier. If I change the font to Arial, nothing changes. The wingdings stay. If I select and copy the wingdings, paste into a generic text editor, the correct text pastes. The document properties section says that courier is an embedded subset.

Here is how the wingdings appear on the page:

Any help is appreciated. I tried this solution about embedding fonts posted here (https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/text-changes-to-special-symbols-with-saving-pdf-i...) and it did not work.

Report · Jul 10, 2023

If you open the file in another viewer besides Acrobat, even a browser, does it show the same issue?

Meanwhile, in Acrobat, create an inventory (Print Production > Preflight > Options...). You can deselect any box except Fonts and click OK. Look at the report and see if it has any better info for you for where the fonts are going awry.

Report · Jul 12, 2023

Thank you for the information. I created an inventory for the first page. Nothing seems wrong with the Courier properties. This is the first time I've run an inventory, so I may not be interpreting the results correctly.

Report · Jul 12, 2023

I did notice that Q, q, and z, are not included in the glyphs. I don't know if that could cause the issue.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

They aren't there because they're probably not used, as the font is being subsetted.

In any case, there's nothing there that would cause it to switch to Wingdings on viewing, so there's something miss with your colleague's Acrobat. Could be a font cache issue. What is their System?

What happens if you/they try to open one of the PDFs in Illustrator?

Report · Jul 13, 2023

I don't know what their system is. Probably a PC, but that's a guess based on the department they work in. I opened the file on a Mac and PC. (I have both.) Opened the file in Acrobat Pro and Illustrator. I see the same problem on both platforms and softwares. I do not get an error message saying that the font is missing. The mac specs are Ventura 13.3.1, Apple M1 Ultra. The PC is Windows 10 Pro, 32 GB, Intel i7.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

also, I opened it in Chrome on PC and got the same issue. Opened it in Preview on the mac and same problem too.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

Very weird. Can you send the file to me to analyze? If it's sensitive material, you can PM me instead of posting it in the open.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

I won't be able to post it since it's building schematics. I know I won't get approval to send the entire document. I'll ask if I can extract a single page and send this to you to analyze. Thanks!

Report · Jul 13, 2023

In fact, you could probably delete all the other stuff on the page besides the errant text and send that.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

oops..nevermind.. I got the file! I wil report back

Report · Jul 13, 2023

Well, this is definitely weird. You actually have two layers of objects where the text is. The Wingdings are in fact not type at all but vector objects (which is why Wingdings didn't show in your Document Properties). However, the REAL type is actually behind those objects, in Courier, but coloured white so you can't see it:

How this happened I couldn't tell you.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

So unless you have a way to go back to the source files for these and create fresh PDFs (these were created in a very old version of Acrobat), the only option is to go in and create new title blocks for all 151 of them. e.g. since they are simple vector files, you could open thse in Illustrator with no loss, fix the title blocks, then resave as a new PDF. A lot of work, I know. Sorry.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

Thank you so much for helping me with this! I really appreciate it. I will let them know that that the easiest fix is scanning our hard copies and creating a new pdf. Of course, contacting the architectural firm to see if a new pdf can be created is the other option.

Report · Jul 13, 2023

There's no need to scan these. That would give you a worse product. The schematics themselves are just fine. For the sample file you sent me, I was able to open in Illustrator, delete the wonky "wingding" characters, chnage the white Courier type to Black, then re_PDF it. Took less than 2 minutes. Of course, you DO have 151 of these, so there would be some time involved. I've sent you back a fixed one.

But yes, if the architecural firm still has the original files, (even though the seem to be from 17 years ago), it may be easier for them just to redo the PDFs... hoping whatever caused the wonky issue doesn't happen.

Report · Jul 14, 2023

Unfortunately, there is no one within their department who knows Illustrator. My conclusion after performing the edits is I can't recommend this task to someone with no experience in Illustrator. It's not for newbies. The easiest solution for them is to scan the documents or have the architectural firm create a new pdf. The department knows that the pdf can be edited. I sent them sample I edited, so if they want to try to do this they can. However, I won't recommend it.

Thanks again for your help!