PDF Uploading to Wordpress Media Library

[Dave at MAMA]

Hi all,

Hopefully this is in the right discussion – It really covers InDesign & Illustrator too, but specifically it is related to fonts & permissions.

Let me explain.

Uploading PDF's to Wordpress is a pretty simple thing, however in the last few years I have been getting repeated errors with some PDFs, while others upload without issue. There are several troubleshooting options out there between other specific Wordpress message boards and Chat GPT. However I was finding that none of those workarounds were giving me any success.

I decided to try and export a 1 page document with the fonts embedded, and the same file with the fonts outlined. The file with fonts embedded did not have success uploading, while the file with fonts outlined uploaded successfully. I then tried this for both downloaded system fonts (OTF & TTF) as well as Adobe Fonts. None of them worked as is, only if the fonts were outlined. Therefore I can only conclude that there must be some sort of roadblock with embedding fonts within PDFs for uploading to Wordpress.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? And if so, how do you resolve without having to outline all fonts? For a one pager, sure it's no big deal, but a large multi-page document this would be enourmously time consuming, and frustrating that the fonts would no longer be fonts within the document anymore.

Any insights would be much appreciated!

[JR Boulay]

[MOVED TO THE ADOBE FONTS DISCUSSIONS]

[gary1234567890]

Hi Dave
Have you perhaps found a better solution? 
I did the convert to outlines thing, which worked when I couldn't upload a four-pager to WP. 
But it's not sustainable and I'm out of ideas!

Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?

[Tarun Saini]

Hi @gary1234567890,

Welcome to the community! If outlining fonts (the current workaround) becomes unfeasible or ineffective, I suggest you reach out to WordPress support for assistance or clarification on the restrictions on PDF uploads.

Regards,

Tarun

[Dave at MAMA]

Hi Tarun and Gary,

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately I have been unsuccessful in resolving this issue via Wordpress support, including the avenues of support mentioned in my initial query. I believe that regardless if there are or are not restrictions with our PDFs, we still need to fulfill our clients expectations.

As you mentioned Gary, you were successful in uploading your PDF after outlining fonts. So your story matches with mine in that the issue lies with embedding fonts. Some time has passed since my initial post, but I can confirm the issue is still random – sometimes they upload fine, sometimes they do not, with a range of otf/ttf/adobe fonts working and not working. Agreeed outlining fonts is not sustainable at all, especially for big documents. Worst case scenario there is always cPanel or an FTP client for uploading, but that is also a pain.

Still no real solution for me.

[Tarun Saini]

Hi 

@Dave at MAMA

,

I'm just curious to know the steps you're trying to upload PDF to WordPress media.

Regards,

Tarun