Dingbat glyph changes when pdf opened in Illustrator

[rosenh]

File created in InDesign, exported as pdf. When I open the pdf in Illustrator, the dingbat bullet changes from the original glyph to something different.  This is a new problem since the recent update.  (SO many problems with this update).

[Ton Frederiks]

Was this recently created on the same machine?

[rosenh]

yes!  I even tried making a new pdf from InDesign and opening that in illustrator.

[Ton Frederiks]

What font did you use, there are many dingbats fonts. Is it an OpenType font?

[rosenh]

Yes, Wingdings, Open Type (TT) font.

[rosenh]

It's a mac os system font.

[Ton Frederiks]

Can you share a pdf that shows the problem?

[rosenh]

I was able to reproduce the problem on a whole new file.  Both are attached.

[Ton Frederiks]

Your files show the problem, my files don't. Can you also share an InDesign file?

[rosenh]

Here it is.  Obviously something on my computer... but which software do I have to delete and reinstall??
I can't upload a packaged file... 

[Ton Frederiks]

With your InDesign file I can reproduce the problem, even if I add a recent used bullet glyph.

Using the same glyph in a new document works fine.

So far it is a mystery to me.

[Ton Frederiks]

Here is my InDesign test. Does that work on your machine?

[rosenh]

Yes yours worked!  So... now to figure out where the glitch is.

[rosenh]

I think I need to hop over to the InDesign forum, because I'm having massive font problems.  When I create a new file, the fonts behave as expected.  When I past a normally-behaving text box from the new file into a file created in the previous InDesign, the fonts CHANGE to a different font.  

[rosenh]

One more thing... it appears to work to paste the text boxes from the old file into a new file... now the glyphs are correct when opened in Illustrator.

[Ton Frederiks]

So it looks more like a corrupted InDesign file. May be worth reporting it at the InDesign forum.

[Monika Gause]

Are you sure it's Wingdings, for me it looks rather like Webdings in your screenshot.

[Ton Frederiks]

I agree, I got 3 Windings fonts and a Webdings. The Webdings has the factory glyph.

[rosenh]

Good eye!  Yes, it's Webdings.  Same issue though. 🙂

[Bobby Henderson]

When opening the PDF in Illustrator is there any warnings about missing fonts? Does the PDF file preview correctly in Adobe Acrobat DC or Adobe Reader?

[rosenh]

No warnings about fonts, they show up correctly, and it view correctly in Acrobat and online.  It's SO weird!

[Bobby Henderson]

Has the document been edited across Mac and PC platforms?

Windows has a Webdings system font as well. The glyphs look mostly the same and in the same glyph table assignments. But when I select the factory building glyph (in Windows' Character Map app) the character code listed for it is "0x24." Unicode listsings are grayed-out; I don't see anything that corresponds with the "U+f0fb" register from the MacOS screen shot image in the original post.

If the document had jumped between Mac and Windows platforms it's possible some sort of conflict could be going on between the Mac and Windows flavors of the Webdings font and baked some bad data into the PDF. Generally I don't like taking a PDF generated by InDesign and trying to open it in Illustrator. The files are not very edit-friendly. But you can't open an INDD file in Illustrator either.

[rosenh]

no, nothing like that. Just my own computer.  The only thing is that I updated the Adobe apps and also my Typeface font management app (I have a help request in to them too).

[Monika Gause]

How did you export that PDF, which options? I can't reproduce it.

[rosenh]

Default press-quality pdf export.  I think this has to do with the recent update, because I've been using these same files for months without an issue.