Placed ai file in indesign not showing correct fonts

[luis0706]

I am placing an ai file in a indesign doc using the Museo Sans font from Adobe Fonts. I have the whole family installed (100, 300, 500, 700, 900) but for some reason the 300 and 900 fonts display as a different font in indesign. If i use 700, the font displays correctly. Why is this happening and how can I fix it without changing the text to curves, I need to keep it editable because the text gets updated sometimes.

[defaulttvr2hdmazys4]

You might have to search for the font in InDesign and "activate" it inside InDesign.

[Steve Werner]

I'd agree with @defaulttvr2hdmazys4 : If the fonts are activated in Illustrator, they may not be activated: Check the InDesign Font menu and activate them if necessary.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@luis0706

As others suggested - you need to make sure that fonts used in Illustrator are accessible by InDesign.

You can have fonts installed in 4x different places:

1) OS level installation / activation - fonts are available to all apps installed in the system, 

2) CC level - fonts are available only in CC apps, 

3) most of the CC apps have their own fonts folder, 

4) in case of InDesign - you can have "Document Fonts" folder next to the INDD file. 

[Scott Falkner · Accepted solution]

The suggestions given do not make sense to me. Illustrator files contain an embedded PDF of the graphic. This embedded PDF is what you see when you preview the file, place it in another program, or rasterize it in Photoshop. If you turn off embedded PDF previews you cannot see what the file looks like unless you open it in Illustrator.

This PDF contains the fonts used in the file. You can create an Illustrator file, deactivate all the fonts it uses, then place it in InDesign and it will look correct. The most likely reason this is not happening is that the font prevents embedding. In the data for all fonts is a flag that says if the font may be embedded in a PDF. If it can't then you will see what you are seeing now. I suspect that some of the flavours of Museo are wrongly flagged to prevent embedding.

[rob day]

I have the whole family installed

Hi @luis0706 , Adobe Type fonts need to be Activated from fonts.adobe.com by clicking an Add Font button—you should not install a font with the same name in one of your System’s font folders.

Cloud activated fonts can be filtered in the Illustrator and InDesign font menus by clicking the cloud icon. Also, InDesign’s Find/Replace Font Info dialog will show an Activated font’s path as Activated from Adobe Fonts, the path for a cloud activated font should not be to a local font folder. Note that there can be a delay before activated fonts are available in the Adobe apps—depends on your connection speed.

[luis0706 · Accepted solution]

Thanks to everyone. Just to let you know, the adobe fonts were synced in InDesign too. When i used those fonts directly in indesign it displayed correctly, the problem was only when i placed illustrator files in indesign. I just updated indesign to the 2025 version and that seems to have fixed the problem, honestly I'll never be sure what was happening before, but i believe it was something similar to what @Scott Falkner mentioned, but thanksfully it got fixed by updating the software.