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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T07:00:08+00:00

When I use Acrobat Distiller (v.9.1.3), it seems that I cannot embed all fonts

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When I use Acrobat Distiller (v.9.1.3), it seems that I cannot embed all fonts — at least not in the way I want to (no subsetting). One example is Wingdings (TrueType).

I activated the tickboxes and settings to “Always embed” and “No subsetting”. If I check in a text editor the *.joboptions file that I saved as my custom Distiller profile it clearly says:

/EmbedAllFonts true
/EmbedOpenType true
/MaxSubsetPct 1
/SubsetFonts false

Some fonts Distiller does embed fully (as requested by me), others not. If I change the setting to do font subsetting, this works with all fonts. Therefore I think that my settings are correct.

Does anyone else experience the same problem/bug with Acrobat?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. 😉

    It so happens that yesterday I was wondering about the very same problem. I then resorted to the official PDF specification as published by Adobe. And there (adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/PDFCreationSettings_v9.pdf#page=36) I read:

    “The following table identifies the types of fonts that you can (or cannot) embed or subset through Distiller settings.

    Distiller control over embedding and subsetting fonts:

     ================== ==================== ============= =====================
 Font?              NeverEmbed?          AlwaysEmbed?  Subset?           
 ================== ==================== ============= =====================
 Type1              Yes                  Yes           Yes                  
 Type3              No (always embedded) -             No (always subsetted)
 TrueType (Type42)  Yes                  Yes           No (always subsetted)
 CIDFontType0       Yes                  Yes           No (always subsetted)
 CIDFontType1       No (always embedded) -             No (always subsetted)
 CIDFontType2       Yes                  Yes           No (always subsetted)
 OpenType           Yes                  Yes           Yes

    For additional information on Type 1, Type 3, Type 42, and CID-keyed fonts, see Chapter 5, “Fonts,” in the PostScript Language Reference and Chapter 5 in the PDF Reference. You also can find additional documentation on fonts
    at the Acrobat Developer Center.
    “Note: Distiller 5 and above also support OpenType fonts; Distiller 4 does not. OpenType fonts are based on the compact font format (CFF). For more information, see the Compact Font Format Specification at the
    Acrobat Developer Center.”

    So this explains it all:

    According to the official Adobe specification…

    • …Type3 and CIDFontType1 are always embedded, even if you set a fontname which happens to be
      one of these 2 fonttypes to       “Don’t embed” ;
    • …Type3, TrueType (Type42), CIDFontType0, CIDFontType1 and CIDFontType2 are always subset,
      even if you set a fontname which happens to be one of these 5 fonttype to       “Don’t subset”.
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