Strange boxes appear as spacing in PDF export

[notme564431462]

For some reason, when I export PDFs, the spaces between words appear as rectangles with Xs in them. This has never happened before -- I've worked with this document a number of times and it's been fine. Don't know why this is happening now and nothing I do seems to work. I've tried changing the export preferences and replacing the font and it doesn't change. I have to export a clean PDF for approval ASAP. Please help!

[davecourtemanche]

Posting the PDF file might help folks diagnose.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @notme564431462,

Sorry to hear about the issue. Could you please share the version of InDesign and your operating system details? It would also be helpful if you could include screenshots from both the InDesign document and the exported output, so I can better understand what's happening. Additionally, please confirm if this is occurring with just this specific file or with others as well.

Looking forward to your response.

Abhishek

[notme564431462]

Hi, 

It's happening with multiple files now. I'm using the latest version of InDesign and Windows. Not sure what other info you need. I've attached a screenshot of what's happening. 

[davecourtemanche]

Are they all using the same font? Are they Adobe fonts? I would try logging out of Creative Cloud, clear my font cache, restart and log back in to Creative Cloud. 

[notme564431462]

Already did that. Not Adobe fonts, but fonts our organization has dictated we use. I've used the same font a million times before and have worked with that same document before without this happening.

[davecourtemanche]

are you comfortable sharing the file? One of us could make a PDF and see if it's your system, the file or the font.

[notme564431462]

No, unfortunately I can't share out as it has some sensitive info.

[davecourtemanche]

Is this happening with other documents? If so, can you just create a doc with lorem ipsum and supply that? If not, have you tried exporting this doc to IDML to see if you can remove corruption? Or copy/paste sections into a new doc & PDF after each step to see if it's one part of the doc corrupting the entire file?

[Joel Cherney]

I think that @davecourtemanche is already giving you lots of good troubleshooting advice, but I think that it's worth following up - you day you have already cleared font caches. Which instructions did you follow? Also, have you tried resetting your preferences? 

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @notme564431462,

I just wanted to check if the issue got resolved after trying the suggestions shared earlier. If you're still facing the problem, could you please share the name of the specific font that's showing these boxes? If possible, you can also share the font file with us for testing so we can verify the behavior on our end.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

[Jeffrey_Smith]

You can try this, when exporting, go to Advanced > Fonts > Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than: 0%.

Note, the default is 100%, 0% will completely encode the entire font set.

[HARSHIKA_VERMA · Accepted solution]

Hi notme564431462,

Hope you're doing well!

We would like to follow up on your issue. Are you able to resolve the issue by following the suggestions shared above?

Please feel free to update the discussion if you need further assistance from us.

We would be happy to help.

Thanks,

Harshika

[notme564431462]

Thanks for checking in! We cleared up the issue.