Windows 10 Print to PDF Error: findfont /courier

[jay45]

Recieving an error when attempting to print as PDF:

%%[ Error: typecheck; OffendingCommand: findfont ]%%

Stack:
/Font
(Courier)
/courier

%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

I have attempted the following....

- Confirmed Courier is isntalled in Windows\fonts (and added as resourse)

- Uninstalled/reinstall adobe Professional

- Changed font settings and folders used to locate fonts

- Start Acrobat Distiller and select "Font locations" within its "Settings" menu. Remove all the font folders listed there, except for the one that points to a subfolder called "/Resource/Font"

- Unchecked "rely on system fonts"

none of which seems to resolve the issue for me. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[Dov Isaacs]

You really are doing all the right things that we would advise …  😁

However, you should not remove C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\ from the list of font locations used by Distiller.

You didn't indicate what application you are printing to Adobe PDF from but if you are in Microsoft Office applications, you are much better off using the Acrobat PDFMaker capabilities that don't require production of PostScript and conversion of PostScript to PDF, the process used by printing to AdobePDF.

The other thing to note is that Courier is not a standard Windows font. There is a low resolution old style Windows bitmap “Courier Regular” font in the Windows font directory, but that is not usable by Distiller (or anything else as far as I know - it's there for hysterical reasons). Exactly what version of Courier did you install on your system?

[jay45]

Thank you for the rapid response.  To clarify, C:\Windows\Fonts was not removed as a resource, rather confirmed it was listed and that the Courier Regular and Courier New were listed. 

I am attempting to print from MS Word to PDF; the document does not contain Courier font (and the issue is present even if I attempt to print a blank document. I have also not manually installed any Courier fonts on my machine unless another application has installed it with an update. 

[Dov Isaacs]

What happens if you use the Acrobat PDFMaker facility? It uses not stink'in PostScript intermediary! 😁

[jay45]

Is this the PDFMaker any different than saving as Adobe PDF?

[Dov Isaacs]

Absolutely!

PDFMaker directly translates Word (or Excel or PowerPoint or Outlook) directly to PDF without any intermediary steps. It is the preferred method of PDF creation with Acrobat and Office. Live transparency and ICC color management is maintained. It allows for bookmarks to be created and links (external and internal) to be preserved. Adobe does not recommend use of printing to Adobe PDF unless you have (and really need) .EPS graphics in you Office documents (Microsoft still silently supports .EPS graphics, but doesn't document it anymore).

[ls_rbls]

++I would like to add to the discussion that, since you're trying to print to PDF see if this helps:

• Go to Control Panel
• Right-click in on the Adobe PDF printer icon, and select from the context menu "Printing Preferences" (not "Printer Preferences")
• Go to the "Adobe PDF Settings" tab
• Down below is a tick box "Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts"  unchek this tickbox and click OK

The suggestion above should also work if instead of printing to PDF directly from MS Word you choose from the File Menu " Save as Adobe PDF".

In addition to the steps above, you can rule out additional  issues by performing and Accessibility check from MS Word:

• Clikc on the File
• Then click on the "Info" tab
• Then select the second wizard "Check for Issues". From the context menu you can run "Check Accessibility". This checker will reveal if  certain fonts are not embedded, for example. It is useful to make sure that you embed all necessary fonts in your word document before a PDF conversion
• You can also disable the Accessibility Checker from running while you work, if, lets say, the Accessibility Checker is or could be the cause of the messages you're receiving during the Save As procedure.
• You can also check if the issue is related to actually not having TrueType and Open Fonts embedded in your word document. This may also be a reason for the conflict. If the case is that you need to embedd fonts : (1) Go to File, (2) Options, (3) Save (4) and go to the section below "Preserve Fidelity when sharing this document:". (5) Check the tickbox " "Embed fonts in the file"
• Additionaly you can also run "Inspect Document"  (it will check if there are add-ins, Macros, ActiveX controls Or XML data, etc.), This allows you to remove undesired objects that could be the root of the problem during a conversion to PDF.

If you run into other font  issues after the PDF was created successfully,  see if when you open the PDF with Acrobat these additional settings need to be modified:

• Go to Edit
• then Preferences
• then Content Editing
• See "Font Options", specifically "Fallback Font for Editing and the option to "Enable Artificial Bold/Italic Font Styles

[Dov Isaacs]

A major problem with some of this advice.

Embedding fonts into an Office document is very problematic. Besides the fact that a font must have editable embeddability permission, Microsoft only supports embedding of TrueType and OpenType TrueType fonts. It doesn't support OpenType CFF fonts (i.e., those with Type 1 Bezier outlines). There are also some issues with the way that the TrueType and OpenType TrueType fonts are embedded that interfere with full and proper PDF creation. Also, embedding fonts in an Office document tends to terribly bloat the size of the Office document, especially if you don't subset the embedded font (and subsetting the embedded font in the Office document makes no sense for an editable document?!?)!

[ls_rbls]

Thank you for clarifying this. Now I know.

[justaskingforafriend]

Did you find a solution to it? The whole this situation is frustrating and cretinistic. I can't find a solution for many months. By the way, Microsoft Print to PDF works just fine.

[ls_rbls]

I think Dov already explained this thoroughly, Print to PDF from MS is a different method than Print to PDF from Acrobat. You may need to manually adjust and customize  some printing  presets. At least that is how I work around it to avoid any sort of postscripting in the mix.

Maybe if you have an example file that you can share I could take a look at it and do some testing and then reply back with some step by step slides of what worked on my end. 

In any case, I've been able to achiev interesting results by Exporting the source PDF document to a .tif image file. Then open it in Acrobat and let the Scan & OCR convert the image to searcheable image automatically. And then SaveAs or Export to MS Word.  You would be impressed with the results.

Maybe the same could be emplyed from MS to Acrobat PDF, whereas the source Word document is exported as TIFF and then open it up directly in Acrobat , and let Acrobat handle the optimization based ion your presets. This is just a guess. I may be wrong, but still is something I would try and see for myself.

[Dan5FE9]

I have the exdact same issue. Started about a week ago. Tried the suggested solutions and still no go. Cute PDF writer works just fine. Pissed off is an understatement.

Dan Kantorowich