Perhaps this is a curiosity with my system/fonts as I can't replicate it elsewhere. Another co-worker created a form in MS Publisher that is set with Arial. When I output this to pdf using a high quality or print preset, the fonts don't embed, and worse, some type just DISAPPEARS. The same is true of Verdana if it is used. Both of these fonts reside in my system as Open Type.
If I force the pdf to be created PDF/A compliant, then all fonts are embedded and Acrobat reports them as True Type.
Aandi Inston said elsewhere: OpenType fonts are almost never found in a PDF file; very few ways of making a PDF will put them there. They are converted to other font formats for historical reasons, so if Acrobat says a font is type 1 you should believe it; that's how it looks to it, even if it didn't start that way.
What is causing the font to disappear when it is visible in the Publisher file? Why is this particular to this system?