Custom font won’t embed

Topic

New Reply

Hi,

I have a non-standard font at work and I am trying to get it to work when I ‘Save-As’ pdf from word. At the moment the font is not showing as ’embedded subset’ in the pdfs I create from word. I am trying to achieve 3 things:

1) Allow text to be searchable in our pdfs.

2) Embed our font in the pdfs.

3) Have bookmarks in the pdfs.

All the things I try give me a different 2 out of these 3!

Here is what I have already done:

– I have checked ‘Embed fonts in the file’ in File –> Options –> Save

– Checking or unchecking the ‘common fonts’ option makes no difference

– I have unchecked ‘Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded’ in the print options

– I have checked the font type, and it is OTF and Preview/Print embeddable (is this the issue?)

Programs: Microsoft 365. MSword, 2306 version. pdf24 (free version)

Here are the outputs:

When I ‘Print’ to pdf24: Font embedded, text searchable, no bookmarks

When I ‘Save as’ pdf in word: Font not embedded, text searchable, yes bookmarks. Font shows as present, but not ’embedded subset’.

When I ‘Export’ in word: Font not embedded, text searchable, yes bookmarks. Font shows as present, but not ’embedded subset’.

So we need to work out how to embed the font using Word (ideally) or figure out how to get bookmarks in pdf24. Given that pdf24 is free software and could change any time, I would rather find a way to make the MSWord solutions work. The fact that pdf24 is embedding the font shows that it IS embeddable, but for some reason the Word options aren’t doing it!

Any ideas? It’s got me stumped.

Thanks for your time

Reply | Quote

Replies

Anyone got any ideas? Or is it just ghosts in the machine?

Reply | Quote

My suggestion is to try printing with Microsoft Print to PDF that comes already installed (look at your printer options) or some other PDF software that might do the job. That print program might preserve the bookmarks. In difficult pdfs I have used the free Pdf995 (lots of ads, but gets the job done) and it has preserved the bookmarks of a word document, but I’ve never tested with embedded fonts.

HTH, Dana:))

Reply | Quote

You indicated it’s a “non-standard” font, is it embeddable?

In order for Save/Export as PDF to be able to embed a font, it must be set for “Font embeddability: installable” like this.

You can check this by using explorer to view the contents of C:\Windows\Fonts and select that specific font.

I suspect you’ll find it’s set for “Font embeddability: Restricted license; Print and Preview; Editable” which means it can only be embedded when you “print” the document to PDF, not when it’s saved/exported.

If it’s restricted, unless it was created “in-house” and the creator can change the setting for you, getting it changed to unrestricted (i.e. installable) will require dealing with whomever owns/created it and, if they’re even willing to do so, there’ll likely be a fee involved to do it and you’ll have to sign an agreement not to distribute the “unrestricted” version to anyone else.

Reply | Quote