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).

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

Here's a weird thing. Try type a single character of the box glyph somewhere on the page and send it to the back. Then try it again.

I do remember dealing with this issue back in the olddd (CS3??) days, where glyphs used specifically as bullet list characters (but not elsewhere) sometime encoded differently than the font's native encoding (Always hex:1D (decimal 29) off and this seems to be happening here. your box should be hex0063 but is encoding as hex0046, which is exactly 1D.) so maybe an old issue has resurfaced?

That being said, it's not uncommon for subset fonts (e.g. XXXXXX+Webdings), especialy CID encoded ones, to totally rewrite their own encoding for the purposes of printing the PDF. But when you want to do something else with it, like open them in Illustrator, it's not a recommended practice at the best of times, and weird font encodings is up there on the list.

[rosenh]

It's gotten worse... something is terribly wrong.  I tried adding a new text box in InDesign and typing into it, and it wouldn't let me type the letter S.  (Obviously, I can type it fine anywhere else) and it randomly changed the font to the Webdings font.  so... I'm thinking the problem is with InDesign.  Now to figure out how to reinstall the previous version?