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Jacque Waiden

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Aug 5, 2024, 1:00:38 PM8/5/24

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EssentiallyI open a PDF (unknown who produced it or how much it's been modified since then), but on some computers I get the error "Cannot find or create the font 'ArialMT'. Some characters may not display or print correctly.", while on others, I get no error dialog at all, but some text is just white boxes while other text (even within the same word or even just a closing bracket (i.e., ']') shows up fine:

From digging into the issue, I understand that some version/variation of a font wasn't embedded when the PDF was created, but what I don't understand is why I can open the exact same PDF in various PDF applications and some of them are able to display the entire PDF without any issue. To wit:

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (2021.005.20060) - White boxes

I ran the document in question through PreFlight and of course it finds a host of issues (font name is not unique; font not embedded; font reverts to .notdef glyph; text cannot be mapped to unicode; etc.).

Confounding the issue even further, I'm able to open the PDF in question just fine in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (in addition to Nitro PDF) on at least one other computer. O' Consistency, whyfor dost thou detest me so!

So my questions are thus: Am I essentially boned on being able to get Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to open this PDF without issue, or at to display everything correctly and, if not, why does it open (and print) correctly with Nitro PDF (of which I'm not typically a fan, but it seems a mite less ... complexified than AAPDC)?

As correctly said, it is the font issue as the font is not properly embedded in the PDF file or it is not present on your computer system. Please try the following preference settings and see if that works for you. Go to Edit (Win), Adobe Acrobat (Mac) > Preferences > Page Display > Under rendering, check use

The "workaround" I just discovered with the same problem (and yes, Use Local Fonts was already checked in my case as well) was simply to Recognize Text. I happened to search for some obvious text in this sheet music pdf, didn't find it, decided to do Recognize Text... and lo and behold, deleting the offending text I had previously added (with Add Text) - "offending" meaning it was the thing triggering the "Cannot find or create" report - and re-adding it... this time worked!

I have a theory on this one: The font I had this issue with is a font that Adobe licensed in the 1990's, but no longer does. I believe they may use this function as a licensing control mechanism.

A work around I found is to right click the PDF file and select "Open with"> "Google Chrome" which displayed it correctly. Then I printed to a new PDF file which looks normal. Trying to redownload it from the Chrome screen did not work.

I had this same issue, and can view it when I open with Google Chrome. As with you, I still could not view it when I redownloaded it from the Crhome screen. However I have figured out a workaround to save the file. In chrome I click to print, then click into my own printer utility, and request it to save as a .pdf. Once downloaded to a file on my computer, I could open and read the document. Finally!

It looks like the required font is not properly embedded into the PDF file, it is not present on the system or you may not have the required permission to use the font. For more info about font embedding please check the help page -fonts.html

It looks like the required fonts are not available on your computer system, there isn't much that we can do from our end. Please check for any missing/pending updates for your computer OS and try updating it and see if that works.

The computer has all possible updates installed, there was even a clean reinstall of operating system during the case. I've already spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. Even moving fonts form other computer is not working.

Hello.

I actually had the same problem on two computers at the company where I work.

All Adobe Acrobat DC version 2022.003.20310 64bit documents are displaying correctly, only from these two computers the fonts are displaying incorrectly. If I open the same document on my computer, everything is correct... If I open the document on the problem computers in EDGE, everything is correct... If I open the document in Adobe Acrobat, it displays the wrong font... If I print the document in EDGE using Microsoft PDF printer and open it in Adobe Acrobat, the document looks fine. If I compare the two files, the second one is 261 kb and the original one is 48 kb. The original document shows PDF Producer: eDocEngine VCL 5.0.0.548 and PDF Version > 1.4 (Acrobat 5.x). Printed document show PDF Producer: Microsoft: (Acrobat 8.x): Print To PDF and PDF Version: 1.7 (Acrobat 8.x).

It looks like Jiri is from Czech Republic and I am from Slovakia, then maybe there is a localization problem??

In my case I tried switching Adobe Reader to English language, then back to Slovak language and the document displayed correctly..

A strange thing happened to me, when I went to repeat this procedure on the second affected computer, I did nothing at all and the same document was already displayed correctly without my intervention. Therefore, I cannot consider this as a solution..

Some documents from two certain providers (our mother company's document system or our business system, nothing I can control or change) will not open correctly when saved/downloaded or "printed" using Microsoft print to pdf. They get displayed exactly as the images above. But only some days, and only some documents.

If I attached a corrupted document to an email and send it to a colleague it opens as it should on any other computer. I am the only user at my company with this problem. I have uninstalled/reinstalled Adobe Reader (free version) several times, rebooted the computer, changed the settings as suggested etc but it doesn't help. Opening the file in a different reader (chrome/edge) solves the issue, but that is a workaround I should not need to use and it limits my possibilities to work with the document.

However, today when this happened I left the document open for our IT department to see when they come by this afternoon. After about 1h the fonts are suddenly displayed correctly. This makes absolutely no sense.

I cannot recreate the issue as I have no idea what triggers it in the first place, it seems completely random. Sometimes it opens showing the text in Wingdings and in front of my eyes changes back to "normal" within a few seconds. But most common is the view shown in the example above and no changes.

This issue has been occuring from time to time for the last perhaps 6 months and it is very annoying. It has also happened when other users has downloaded the same main document from the document system, attached it and emailed it to me. To them it looks good, whereas I get hieroglyphs. Our IT department is at wits' end and tries the same remedies every time to no avail.

I am working on a Dell computer running Windows 10 with all the latest updates and I completely reinstalled Adobe Reader (free version) this morning, with a fresh download from your website.

If the problem persists, you can try resetting Acrobat preferences to their default settings. This can be done by following the instructions provided here: Adobe Community - How to Reset Acrobat Preference Settings to Default

Another troubleshooting step is to create a new test user profile with full admin rights on Windows and try using the application from there. This can help determine if the issue is related to user-specific settings.

Had a user with this error and noticed these are character map fonts, these kind of fonts are local to the computer and can sometimes be displayed like this in web pages for organizational use, I hadn't noticed they could be on Adobe until today. I went into Preferences --> Page Display (Right column) --> Under rendering, turn "Use Local Fonts" off.

This turning this setting off seemed to have fixed the page instantly for this user, they only had this issue from a specific sender, not all their documents were like this. I told them they may need to re-enable the setting if they ever encounter font issues with other documents from other providers that they receive documents from.

When I view my prototype via the XD mobile app I get fonts missing. I'm using Roboto, something my Android device should find attractive and my prototype is generated from an updated XD on W10 OS. When I preview the same mobile layout on desktop the font is not missing, however I get another font missing message that regards a totally different font that I'm not using in that prototype at all, as I'm only using Roboto for this project.

If you don't mind me taking a guess about this, there is Roboto in TypeKit, and there is Roboto from various other places that you can add to Windows 10. Although they have exactly the same name, Adobe may only be embedding the ones that are licensed via TypeKit.

There is something slightly confusing on that page, there's an option to sync each version of the font, and a sync all, and an add to kit option. I think add to kit is for when using the font on a web site. I used the sync all option, and it seemed not to work, so then I did just the sync on Robot Regular, and that worked.