Emoji not exporting to PDF properly

[Lm1611]

After adding emojis in InDesign (2021), using the Apple Color Emoji font and exporting to PDF, I find a black square surrounds them:

Tried changing fonts too.

All thoughts welcome.

[Steve Werner]

Emojis are basically designed for screen use. They are not fully supported in the PDF standard. It may work or partially work in some applications and not in others. 

I found what you got in InDesign 2021 but it worked OK in Illustrator 2021:

[Marysoly]

Hi, I've been having the same issue too with indesign.

[Dov Isaacs]

The only “color” OpenType fonts that are officially supported by Adobe are OpenType SVG fonts. Included with recent releases of  InDesign and Illustrator is the Emoji One Color OpenType SVG font. Try that. The export to PDF and can be printed without any issues.

Unfortunately, there are at least three different formats of “color” OpenType fonts out there and not one of them is globally supported.

[Wilton PublishingServices]

I was wondering why the same document I pdf'd a few weeks ago had the emoji fine with white background then the one I tried to export to pdf yesterday had a black box round it. The emoji one smiley faces are not the same as the Apple Color ones. I need the Apple Color emoji. Any ideas? Odd it worked fine a few weeks back but now doesn't!

[Steve Werner]

It's working for me, here are my specs, export to PDF with High Quality Print, viewing in Adobe Acrobat::

We need more system specs from you. Please tell us what operating system (exactly) you're running. Please tell us (exactly) what InDesign version you're using. What PDF preset? What PDF reader?

[Wilton PublishingServices]

I am using macOS catalina version 10.15.7

I have a creative cloud account so am using the 2021 version

PDF Preset:

High Quality print Acrobat 8/9 (PDF1.7)

Compression is the default one 300ppi for images above 450ppi

Comress text and line art is ticked and so is crop image data to frames (are these correct?)

I am exporting with crop marks

Forst is the one I pdf'd a few weeks ago and the second the one I did this week...

[Test Screen Name]

"I have a creative cloud account so am using the 2021 version" People will often ask for the exact app version, and really they do want that full info. This is partly because failed updates are a big problem, and often people whjo think they are up to date are actually not. Please give a full version number like 17.1.4 or whatever. Please let us know if you need help finding out.

If you are free to share the actual PDFs publicly, it may help, but you have already seen the very strong advice NOT to use these fonts in production. I suggest you find a matching graphic and use it instead of a font. Maybe you could even make such a graphic yourself, with Illustrator, from the font you like.

[Test Screen Name]

To be clear: it needs to be a graphic where the font is no longer text of any kind - converted to outlines, rasterised, whatever.

[Wilton PublishingServices]

Indesign Version 16.0

There is one new update since to 16.1 which I have not yet downloaded.