Variable Data Problem (Help!)

[andys17762500]

The letters "hn" are being replaced with "Ú" in my output to a PDF.  It's not a consistent problem, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. It's random.

Using Mac InDesign, and usually working with a CSV that comes from the PC side.  Usually a CSV generated from Satori mail software.  Not sure this is always the case though.  

Has anyone else exeprienced a similar issue?  It's been happening for a very long time here, and I would like to find out how to stop this from happening.  It's a real problem on mailing jobs.  Any name, like Johnson or John, outputs as JoÚson, or JoÚ.  Not on every job, and we've ruled out font corruption issues.  I'm guessing it's some sort of encoding issue in the CSV.  Still, I can't find the problem, and can't repeat it. 

It's driving me nuts!

Any techinical Guru's out there that could explain this to me? 

[Eugene Tyson]

Try using UTF 16 instead.

[andys17762500]

UTF 16 in the csv file?

I've never heard of UTF 16 encoding. 

[Eugene Tyson]

https://help.surveygizmo.com/help/encode-an-excel-file-to-utf-8-or-utf-16

[Jongware]

You already ruled it out but in my experience this still is a  local font issue. It typically occurs when you have conflicting versions of the same font installed, and InDesign attempts to apply ligature rules from one version to the other. When the glyph order is different, the wrong characters are replaced with a wrong single glyph.

You can test this by looking in the Find Font dialog what actual file is used by InDesign to render the font. Temporarily move it elsewhere, and check if InDesign suddenly finds another font file to ise. Repeat until the font is reported missing, then install the most recent version only.

[andys17762500]

My prepress department swears they don't have duplicate fonts open, but I will definitely look into this deeper.  I don't work in the prep department, so I have a layer of people between me and problem.  Possible this is the cause. 

Thanks!

[Jeffrey_Smith · Accepted solution]

When exporting PDF, try changing the font subset value to 0%.

Export > Advanced > Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than: >  0%

Note: this will create a larger file.

[andys17762500]

Thanks!  I'll give this a shot too.  See what happens.

I will report back if something works.  Could take a while, because I never know when it's going to happen.