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Question

Helvetica Font displaying as Squares

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
November 6, 2023
3 replies
1768 views

Hi,

For a client of mine we created a PDF in the Helvetica Font. They have a license and provided us with the .ttf files. However when opening the file in Adobe Illustrator to Edit the PDF, it only shows Squares, even though it knows it is Helvetica. When typing new text it shows the text in Helvetica.

Something is going terribly wrong when opening/parsing the document to edit it.

This topic has been closed for replies.

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Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

Is it possible the client didn't provide the exact same font files of Helvetica that were used in the document?

I'm only asking since there are many "flavors" of Helvetica font files in use and floating around. The MacOS includes a pretty good variety of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue styles. But many builds of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue have been sold commercially over the past 30-plus years in T1, TTF and OTF formats. Some old Adobe software included a few styles of Helvetica in Postscript Type 1 format (and those font files no longer work in current Adobe applications). Helvetica Now was released in 2019 in a huge package of static OTF files; a variable version followed in 2021. If someone has a big collection of fonts, including multiple variants of Helvetica, it might be easy to get font files confused and email the wrong versions. The potential for errors is compounded if someone has the type family in multiple font formats.

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

If you use a PDF preset to embed the fonts, and they are opening in Acrobat, it should work.

Avoid opening a PDF in Illustrator to edit. Edits should be made to the Illustrator file.

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BrisszAuthor

Participant

Sadly opening the PDF to work on in Illustrator is a requirement by the client, and is supported by AI so it should work tbh.
How can I check if a font is embedded or not? This is a possibility I was thinking off too.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@Brissz schrieb:

Sadly opening the PDF to work on in Illustrator is a requirement by the client, and is supported by AI

"Opening" a PDF is not supported by Illustrator. PDF is not a native file format and it will always be an import. The PDF file format was never meant for editing in the first place. It's a presentation and output format.

It is detailed in here why editing a PDF in Illustrator is not a good idea: https://prepression.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-ten-commandments-of-pdf.html

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Does a missing font warning appear?

Can you ust assign the Helvetica?

Which language is it?

Is the missing Glyph protection setting turned on in the preferences?

Is there perhaps a change from operating systems in the workflow?

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BrisszAuthor

Participant

Missing Fonts appeared 2 weeks ago because I had forgotten to upload the fonts in Adobe Creative Cloud.
After doing that everything worked, but today after updating to the latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud, and reuploading the fonts for a demo tomorrow it no longer works. (I am doubting myselves if the "edit" ever worked, 95% certain it did before the update)

It knows the Font is Helvetica, can be seen in attached picture. S

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Is the missing glyph protection turned on in the preferences?

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