Missing fonts on printed PDFs

I have designed forms in InDesign, and then placed fields with Adobe LiveCycle designer. The forms also have an EAN8 barcode on them, which means I need to save the forms as compatible with Adobe 7 and up. To use the form, our customers print them off our website and post the forms into us. On a couple of occassions, forms have been received with text missing (the field boxes are still there, but the original text included in the InDesign layout is missing). The weird thing is that the only text missing is everything in Futura Std Heavy, but only if it's in sentence case (other Futura Std Heavy text that is all caps is still visible). When the PDF was made, no links were missing. Any ideas what the problem is? Could it just be a compatiblity issue (people using Adobe 6 or something)?

Missing fonts on printed PDFs

How are you creating the pdfs and what joboption settings are you using? I'd recommend you try to turn off font subsetting and embedding the entire font.

Missing fonts on printed PDFs

It may be that the customer is saving the file some way without the fonts included. Why not simply have the data submitted and open the data file (FDF or XML) in the PDF form. That would give you all of the form with the original fonts and the data.

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I haven't changed any of the default settings for fonts. When I look up the TouchUp properties, it says 'Can embed font', but the check boxes for Embed and Subset are not highlighted so I can't change them. Both boxes are checked.

Unfortunately, at the moment we can only accept paper forms, which means people need to print it out at home (or pick up a pre-printed one from our office).

It's possible that they are saving it to their home computer before filling it out and printing it. Any ideas how the way they save it could affect the fonts?

Check to see if the fonts are embedded in the file. If you restrict your forms to the Adobe fonts, then you should not normally have a problem, but embedding is still a good idea. You can check ctrl-D and the font tab for the fonts embedded. I am not fully sure about the form field fonts. If the font is not on their system and not embedded, then Reader will try to find a replacement. The other aspect to printing is that they have to have document and markup selected. Markup is what is filled into the form. There is a good chance this markup selection is the problem.

zits