Copy from a PDF (made from ID file) to Indesign leaves characters missing

[essejesse]

Here's the situation. I have a very technical document that I'm combining with a new catalog I designed for my workplace. The old technical document uses Kozuka Gothic Pro, it's opentype. To avoid Indesign pasting that typeface and formatting into my new document, I thought I would create a PDF and paste from there. Copy/paste is essential, as there are over 225 products with 13 unique strings of information each, and I'm on a decent, yet limited timeline. I also want to reduce the number of mistakes I can make while doing this. The new document uses Fabrikat, another OT typeface we bought recently.

My issue arises when I copy from the PDF to the Indesign document I'm creating. I end up getting loads of missing characters. You can see in the screenshots that the typeface is fine in the original, fine before pasting, and then disastrous afterward. It seems like the glyph association is different from one typeface to the other. I'm really hoping there's something I'm overlooking or just not thinking of, but I'm out of ideas and googling keeps thinking I mean the whole typeface is falling out.

Red text in screenshots is just for reference (obviously).

This is the info I'm trying to copy (what's shown is from Indesign, but I have a PDF I'm using too)

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Here's where it's going.

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The result from copying "18 Quart / 17 Liter Ultra™ Latch Box" in Acrobat, and pasting into Indesign. As you can see, some characters do come through, but not many.

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I'm trying to avoid having to reformat all the text. This is going to be enough steps as it is.

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Thanks in advance for any ideas!

[SJRiegel · Accepted solution]

You don't need the PDF to avoid transferring unwanted formatting.

Copy the text from the old document and select a piece of text in the new document that has your desired new formatting. Then use Edit > Paste Without Formatting.

This will force the pasted text to pick up formatting from the selected text in the new document.

[essejesse]

I've never been so happy to be an unobservant idiot! Thanks for pointing out this basic feature I've somehow never needed before now in my entire career

[essejesse]

Thanks Paul, I may have other uses for that functionality, so I'll check out the software.