Question Fonts not embedding properly in PDF exports

[MostlyFrustrated]

I've Googled for a solution to this, but can't find one anywhere. If someone has experience and/or a solution for this, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

I'm using Access 2010's DoCmd.OutputTo in VBA to export reports to PDF. The "look and feel" of the PDFs are very important, as they will be distributed to clients of my company. I'm using special corporate fonts that are legally licensed for embedding as a subset. Two are .ttf (TrueType) and two are .otf (OpenType) fonts. The ttf fonts embed fine; the otf fonts do not, and the PDF viewer substitutes something it thinks is close (but really isn't). In the properties of the fonts in Windows Control Panel, the embedding properties are exactly the same for both.

Anyone know of a way to force the fonts to embed? or any other workaround? Also, is there any way to edit-protect PDFs with VBA code? Or apply any other type of PDF security such as requiring a password to open?

 

[spikepl]

I am not aware of any parameters one could fiddle for the built-in PDF-writer.

Explore other options:
1. See what happens in Word - perhaps it can do more than Access. Prepare a document enitrely in Word using your various fonts and ee how that exports to PDf usign the built-in PDF-writer. If it ports the fonts, then yuou'd have to export to Word firts or to construct your report in Word from within Access
2. Check the various PDF-writers. Some of them (mostly among the nonfree ones) accept command line options, so you could write code that would write the PDF to a file transparent for the user.

On reflection: before all that make sure that it is not your specific PDF-reader that is faulty.

 

[MostlyFrustrated]

@spikepl

Thanks for the suggestion, but I had already tried that. It seems to be a Microsoft thing, as Word doesn't embed otf fonts properly either. My Corel software products embed them correctly.

After doing some further digging, I found a post on another site that observed that Microsoft co-developed the OpenType specification, but their software ironically doesn't fully support them. Yet another example of the mediocrity dished out by the world's largest software company. :banghead:

Anyway, since we just recently purchased the OpenType license, I'm going to go back to the font publisher, explain the situation, and ask if we can "trade it in" for the TrueType version. I think that is my best shot at making this work.

 

[MostlyFrustrated]

@spikepl again

Sorry, after I posted I realized I didn't respond to your other points. I tried both Foxit and Adobe PDF readers (as well as Adobe Pro) with the same results.

Also, I have used a third-party "PDF printer" product for many years to generate PDFs when the program I was using didn't have that native capability. Generally I have had good results. In this case, distributing that software with the Access db to all my users isn't practical. I also have embedded hyperlinks in the PDF (where the URL itself is hidden, but attached to another word in the document), and those are not preserved properly when the PDF is created with that tool.

My team has used PDF Creator with Access for quite some time (before A2010 introduced native PDF creation) but we've been largely abandoning it lately because it seemed like an unnecessary layer, and because we have historically encountered challenges when our IT department decided it was time to roll out the latest version to the 250 or so users we support. I might be forced to consider that option if all else fails.