Technicians claim my file doesn't have fonts embedded…but they're incorrect, right?

[ceencha]

I recently uploaded this file to Amazon :

http://www.ccwatershed.org/pdfs/90876-font-pdf-embedded/download/

But when Amazon converted it, they made it look like this:

http://www.ccwatershed.org/media/photologue/photos/90877-errors-font-embed.png

(LULU had the same issue.)

When I asked why, they said:

Our Technical Department team checked your title ID 7934337 and they were able to confirm that the visual errors the your are seeing in the print interior file are a result of unembedded fonts specifically, PlantinMTStd-Regular and PlantinMTStd-Italic.

Question:

Does this file really not have embedded fonts?

http://www.ccwatershed.org/pdfs/90876-font-pdf-embedded/download/

Also: those are just 2 pages out of 100—most of the other pages were just fine.

As you can see here:

http://www.ccwatershed.org/media/photologue/photos/90875-my-version.png

…the file was created using the most recent & up-to-date version of Adobe Indesign.

The musical files were created with Sibelius 8.4.2 and were exported as PDF before being 'placed' into Adobe Indesign.

[ceencha]

The reason this is so discouraging … I've used Sibelius & In Design for 10+ years without issue.  But sometimes I feel like when they "update" the programs they break stuff.  I'm in tears over this.

[ceencha]

I mean, how can they not have TIMES NEW ROMAN ?

[ceencha]

I went through and took out ALL the Plantin fonts.

Resubmitted to Amazon — same exact errors happened.

So annoying & wrong.

[ceencha]

So, they finally admitted it is font problem.  I guess Amazon doesn't have access to Times New Roman?  In any event, here's their solution:

After reviewing your files, our Technical Services team has indicated that the issue still lies with the fonts. Please open the PDF file and go to File > Properties. On the Font tab, there will be a list of all the fonts in the file. The fonts are embedded as a subset, this means only the characters used in the document are embedded. This is causing the font problems because the full character map is not available when printed.

The best solution to this is to outline the fonts. The Create Outlines command gets the font outline information from the font type, the characters are converted into outlines retaining all graphics formatting. This action will need to be taken in the parent InDesign file and outline the fonts in the file. The outline option can be found in the "Type" tab in the tool bar. Once the fonts have been outlined you can export or print as a New PDF (different name) and upload this file to your account.

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So now I need to learn the best way to “ outline the fonts ”

They say “This action will need to be taken in the parent InDesign file and outline the fonts in the file.”

So I guess I outline the fonts using In Design, not Adobe Acrobat?

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

#1. If you do decide to convert the text to outlines, then follow Dov Issac's instructions above and perform that task in the latest version of Acrobat DC Pro. As stated before, do not muck with your InDesign file. (FYI, you received free advice from the world's leading expert in this topic, Dov Issacs of Adobe. Listen to him!)

#2. A few weeks back, my shop had a similar font encoding problem with Times New Roman used in an InDesign job (latest version on Mac). The client said she used the TNR that came with her Mac OS.

Her version of the TNR font wouldn't embed into the PDF, nor would it be packaged up with InDesign's Package utility. And the PDF didn't recognize our version of TNR to process the file.

Solution: We opened her InDesign INDD file, swapped out her TNR font for our version (TTF/OpenType version), and re-exported the PDF. Everything worked.

We never before had a problem like this with a font so ubiquitous as Times New Roman.

Maybe something has recently changed with the font licensing and embedding of TNR? I know on the Windows side, MS no longer installs Arial Unicode MS and has even stripped it off our Windows systems. (Arial Unicode MS is a special version of the regular Arial font.)

FYI, I doubt Amazon would want to swap their TNR for yours because this could cause text reflow problems. They would not want to be legally responsible for changing your document like that. That's why they're pushing this file back to you to fix.