Font not allowed... again

[framstudiotest]

I'm almost exclusively using fonts from Adobe Fonts and installing them on my Adobe Enterprise account. The Adobe Fonts page says "The full Adobe Fonts library is cleared for both personal and commercial use." It also specifically mentions PDFs for print, which is what I'm making; books.

And still on maybe half of the fonts I try I get "Font not allowed" in Preflight. I'm exporting for offset printing only, not ebooks or interactive PDFs, and I'm assuming that the printing house will not try to hack the PDF and steal fonts.

I sort of suspect that that the warning message is incorrect and doesn't apply to me but I'm not certain and I cannot risk that a run of thousands of books have font problems.

Earlier I have simply outlined these fonts as they were always "arty" fonts that are only used a couple of places in headlines. But this time I have over 240 instances of fonts not being allowed, while being logged into my Adobe account and working with Adobe fonts.

What do I do? Simply edit my preflight preferences and hide the warnings? Or do I need to change something?

[BobLevine]

Could be a buggy error. What font? When/where are you seeing this? 

If you ignore it and export the PDF, is there an issue with Acrobat's pre-flight?

[framstudiotest]

It happens with most fonts that I have downloaded from the Adobe Fonts page through Creative Cloud. In other words fonts that I guess didn't come with the computer. In this case nearly all typewriter fonts I have found on the page, such as Typeka, Sunflower, P22 Typewriter, Secret Service Typewriter, JohnDoe, etc.

This is using the Preflight profile I have chosen in InDesign. Which is all the preflight I do. As you can tell I don't know a lot of technical things about the printing. The PDF files look correct in Acrobat when exported. But I worry that they will be stopped in printing overseas and that there will be great expenses.

[BobLevine]

Ah. I think I know the issue but please check the conditions in your preflight profile. Does it exclude Opentype fonts or only allow Truetype?

[framstudiotest]

Back at the office after a day away.

No, it is only "protected fonts" that are not allowed. I read that they are considered protected because even though I have the right to use them, the person I send documents to may not. However in my case this shouldn't apply since I'm sending files to offset printing. Yet the warning appears.

[Eugene Tyson]

If it's just a preflight check in InDesign and you're satisified with the font usage, you can just ignore it. 

There's another preflight check (can't remember off top of my head) that doesn't work as expected, I think it's Slug or Bleed or something doesn't get flagged correctly, if you set the Left slug to be 100mm and then put it in the preflight check it doesn't flag it. 

So if you're happy with the font usage, then what's the issue other than the Preflight in InDesign?

[framstudiotest]

Thank you! Yes, I'm happy with how my output looks. But of course my worry has been that the printers would halt printing because there was a font conflict on their side. After all my fonts are on my computer and I check my PDFs on that same computer using the same Adobe software and settings. So a message suggesting that fonts might not display correctly somewhere else is worrying.

It happened once before that printing was halted due to a color profile mismatch. That cost about $3000 as they had already started printing.

But if it's a warning that posts no actual danger then I'm happy. Thank you!

[leo.r]

By @framstudiotest

If you expand the font entries and click individual occurrences, the error info should appear in the Info pane - what does it say? 

[framstudiotest]

Says almost the same as in your screenshot: Problem: Fonts not allowed: Protected.

Same suggested fix to replace the fonts.

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

When you export the PDF go to the file properties and check they are embedded. 

Once embedded then it shouldn't be an issue. 

CMD D or CTRL D will open the properties then go to the fonts tab.

Once it says Embedded or Embedded (Subset) you should be fine. 

[framstudiotest]

Ahh, yes they are there! Embedded subset. Thanks a lot!