Acrobat Pro DC Add-In for MS Word 2016 Cannot Find Font

[Bob_Brown]

I have downloaded and installed the Diplomata font from Google Fonts.  It is installed in \windows\fonts\ and has an embedability property of "installable."  The file name is "Diplomata Regular."

I can use Diplomata in Word documents.  When I use Word's "save as" and then select "PDF" a document with the correct font is produced.  When I use the "Save as Adobe PDF" item under "File," which I believe to be a part of the Acrobat add-in, all is well.  When I choose File => Print and choose "Adobe PDF" as the printer, I get mojibake, garbled letters, in what appears to be Courier New when printing a short test document, and when I print a longer document, I get a Distiller error and the job fails.  If I look at "Properties" on the Adobe PDF printer and select fonts, the Diplomata font is not listed.

However, I can print Roboto, also a Google Fonts font, using the same mechanism without trouble.

Advice for debugging this will be most welcome.  Thanks!

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Glad to know that creating PDF via the Acrobat PDFMaker Save as Adobe PDF does in fact work. That is the PDF creation method endorsed by Adobe for use with Microsoft Word, not printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance.

That having been said, I did try creating a sample Word document and used the Diplomata font. The correct output was created by both Save as Adobe PDF and by printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance. In other words, I could not duplicate the symptoms you described using Word 365, Windows 10 1909, and Acrobat Pro DC.

Exactly what version of Acrobat are you using?

For the Adobe PDF Properties, go to the Advanced tab, select Printing Defaults, and under the Adobe PDF Settings tab, make suer that the Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts option is unchecked (i.e., disabled). OK your way back, exit and re-enter Word and try again. See if that resolves the problem.

[Bob_Brown]

Thank you, Dov.  Unchecking Rely on system fonts only fixed the problem.

Do you have time to explain why Roboto worked and Diplomata did not, or why Diplomata is not listed in the fonts list? 

Is this what you need concerning version info?
Installed Acrobat: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe
Version: 20.9.20074.389258
Creation Date: 2020/06/29
Creation Time: 17:36:32

[Dov Isaacs]

I can only guess at this, but I suspect the problem is in how you installed Diplomata as opposed to Roboto which wsa already installed.

In “the good old days” you could install a font by simply dragging it into the C:\Windows\Fonts directory. A few Windows 10 versions back a change was made in terms of font installation. All fonts that were already installed, possibly by copying them into C:\Windows\Fonts were treated as fonts installed for all users of the system. Now fonts can be installed either for the currently logged-on user or for all users of the system. Fonts should be installed now by right-clicking on the font file and selecting an installation option. The safest method is to use the Install for all users option as opposed to simply Install (which installs only for the current user). Various Adobe and other applications only support fonts installed for all users. In the context of the problem you experienced, I suspect that Roboto was already installed on your system when the Windows change occurred and was thus already installed for all users. Either right-clicking the Diplomata font and selecting just Install or possibly copying the font to  C:\Windows\Fonts installed the font only for the current user and was not “seen” by Acrobat Distiller that runs in the background and converts the PostScript generated by the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance to PDF. 

That's my best guess!

[Bob_Brown]

Thank you very much for taking the time.  I did install Roboto myself, but possibly installed it differently from Diplomata.  I'll do some more testing and will report again if I find anything, in case it might help others.

Edit: the problem, as you correctly surmised, was that Roboto had been installed "for all users" and Diplomata had not.  Thanks again!