Font errors in PDF output

[Valiant]

Has anyone else had problems with Adobe Acrobat DC? An update from Adobe installed yesterday (8/13) and now I get an error about fonts opening PDF files. These files are generated from Flare and both new and old files (that I previously could open) have this error. Other people with Reader can open them. I can open them on my home computer with a much older version of Acrobat. I've tried the reboot, reinstall (fonts and Acrobat). I don't see an option to just roll back on Acrobat update.

This only seems to happen with files from Flare, even ones that were fine last week. Instead of the company fonts displayed, there is either MS San Serif characters or blank space.
Files generated from Framemaker don't have the issue.

I am certain this is an Adobe issue.

[Valiant]

Adobe tech support has requested I send them a file with this issue after I told them it would be impractical to generate every PDF file I've made using these fonts. Plus some others have started to see the issue both in Acrobat DC and Reader DC.
Fingers crossed for a quick patch from Adobe.

[anewell_co]

Based on what I can see in the Adobe forums (which are blowing up with this issue today) it looks like Adobe Reader might be cracking down on improperly embedded fonts in version 2019.012.20036. This is definitely affecting a lot of people. There is also some speculation on their forums that the latest Adobe Reader (2019.012.20036) no longer supports CFF charset format 2. Not sure which is causing it, but it definitely seems to be impacting a lot of people, and not just Flare users.

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2643878
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2645745

I called Flare support about this and she said that had received quite a few calls and are preparing a bug report. Hopefully there will be an answer from someone soon. Suddenly nobody in my office can open any of the Flare documentation that I've created using Adobe. The font I use is Proxima Nova. However, if I publish the same guide using Arial, it opens fine.

[BrianAtInTouchHealth]

Yep. Yesterday, all my PDFs were fine. Today, I get the following message on all Flare-produced PDFs:

adobe-embedded-font-error081519.PNG

I don't have this issue on Word and Publisher PDFs. There are several threads on the Adobe forums so I hope this issue is fixed soon.

Brian

[BrianAtInTouchHealth]

Adobe''s response:

We are aware that there is some defect in the MadCap Flare PDF files in terms of embedding of fonts that is no longer ignored by the most recent release of Acrobat/Reader.

I have one sample and am following up internally with regards to exactly what the problem is with how MadCap Flare is producing PDF and secondly what changed in Acrobat to no longer simply ignore the error.

Brian

[Isleofgough]

Same issue for me. Everything worked until today. I contacted Dov Isaacs at Adobe and sent him the problem pdf.

[Matze]

we've the error as well with the adobe DC version.

[Catcha]

Same here, yesterday I got HYPTJ+MyriadPro-Bold-identy-H today its LXGWTH +Myriad etc....

[awinnefeld]

Yeah, it does not seem like this is limited to PDFs created in Flare - this seems to be a bigger problem with the current version of Adobe Acrobat and embedded fonts. We received an invoice from a contractor yesterday and had exactly the same problem with it.

[Valiant]

Same issue for me. Everything worked until today. I contacted Dov Isaacs at Adobe and sent him the problem pdf.

I was not impressed with Mr. Isaacs' response to the problem in Adobe's forums.

[BrianAtInTouchHealth]

Yeah, it does not seem like this is limited to PDFs created in Flare - this seems to be a bigger problem with the current version of Adobe Acrobat and embedded fonts. We received an invoice from a contractor yesterday and had exactly the same problem with it.

Yea. There are multiple threads on this issue on the Adobe forums and in this thread a poster mentioned that his company uses an in-house PDF builder and they're seeing the issue too. And as others have mentioned, I'm seeing it in both Acrobat Reader and Pro.

Brian

[Isleofgough]

I agree that this is primarily an Adobe issue, as Acrobat opened pdfs from Flare fine until recently. However, it does not surprise me that there are minor flaws in font embedding in Flare. Flare is great for about 98% of the creation of documents, but often leaves errors unfixed for years. For example, the compressed mime in ePubs, that does not meet standards, has been known but unfixed for years.

I wish that the export to Framemaker worked and was not deprecated in the most recent Flare build. It would have given at least a temporary way of creating a good pdf. Word outputs have their issues.

[doc_guy]

Here is the conversation I had with Adobe today:

[Isleofgough]

Adobe's tech support is the worst. They have pretty good software, but dealing with problems will cause you to tear your hair out. I'm hoping Dov will work with programmers to fix this soon, as this problem is critical.

[Valiant]

Here is a file-by-file way to get around this issue from a post by an Adobe employee on their forum. I've had to resort to this as no fix has come from Adobe and I need to get some PDFs distributed to my teams. It's apparently not just Flare PDFs that have the issue.
Open the PDF file and dismiss the font error.
From the Tools, select Print Production.
From the options select Preflight.
In the Preflight window, select Prepress, Color and Transparency.
Under PDF fixups, select Fix potential font problems.
Click Analyze and fix.
Save the file.
The resulting file won't have the font error when it is opened again.

[Isleofgough]

Thank you, Valiant. That worked for me.

[EBergman]

Here is a file-by-file way to get around this issue from a post by an Adobe employee on their forum. I've had to resort to this as no fix has come from Adobe and I need to get some PDFs distributed to my teams. It's apparently not just Flare PDFs that have the issue.

Thanks for this! Let's hope the bug gets fixed soon.

[Bart Bogaert]

Which version of Acrobat Pro are you using? I cannot seem to find the 'Fix potential font problems' fix... I'm using Acrobat Pro X.
Is there a way to share this profile and fix?

[Valiant]

Which version of Acrobat Pro are you using? I cannot seem to find the 'Fix potential font problems' fix... I'm using Acrobat Pro X.
Is there a way to share this profile and fix?

Mine is Acrobat Pro DC.
This option is well hidden. I tried to detail how I got to it in the post above.

[pattivaitaitis]

Here is a file-by-file way to get around this issue from a post by an Adobe employee on their forum. I've had to resort to this as no fix has come from Adobe and I need to get some PDFs distributed to my teams. It's apparently not just Flare PDFs that have the issue.

Thanks for this! Let's hope the bug gets fixed soon.

Ditto! It worked! At least now I have something I can do when customers start running into this. THANK YOU!

[doc_guy]

At least now I have something I can do when customers start running into this.

Be aware, this is not something customers can do themselves, unless they have Adobe Acrobat. (Reader can't do this.) If you have customers that are running into the issue, my suggestion would be to have them open the PDF in a browser or another PDF reader. For example, you can right-click on the PDF file and tell it to open in Chrome, and it renders perfectly.

[chuck_agari]

One of the issues here is that Preview (Mac) does not display changes properly in Flare-generated PDFs. So for documents distributed for review with changes marked, reviewers must use Acrobat. And now they can't.

Also, it seems that Flare's own Preview function in topics uses Acrobat for rendering, and this is now broken because of this issue.

[Matze]

Here is a file-by-file way to get around this issue from a post by an Adobe employee on their forum. I've had to resort to this as no fix has come from Adobe and I need to get some PDFs distributed to my teams. It's apparently not just Flare PDFs that have the issue.
Open the PDF file and dismiss the font error.
From the Tools, select Print Production.
From the options select Preflight.
In the Preflight window, select Prepress, Color and Transparency.
Under PDF fixups, select Fix potential font problems.
Click Analyze and fix.
Save the file.
The resulting file won't have the font error when it is opened again.

Whow, I´m to stupid for the preflight or what My [Analyze and fix] button is grayed out. I can only click on [Check]

[Isleofgough]

At the top of your "preflight" box, do you have "Prepress, color, and transparency" selected? You won't see the menu if "essentials" or some of the other options are selected.

[Matze]

everything is fine, but the feature is grayed out / locked