Word 2007 to PDF results in unwanted font size changes

In Word 2007, under the Word Options menu. If you go to Advanced area and scroll down to the Show document content area and click on the Font Substitution button does is say that all fonts used in this document are available?

I'm assuming you meant to do this while in the actual document. The message I got said "No font substitution is necessary. All fonts used in this document are available".

Thank you!

With the PDF open in Acrobat, if you go to the File > Properties menu and select the Font tab. Does it say that all the fonts are embedded?Do you experience the issue if you try the following:

1. Choose File > Print, and then click Advanced.
2. Select Print As Image.
3. Click OK to close the Advanced Print Setup dialog box, and then click Print.

Well... there are actually several fonts throughout the document. Most show up as TrueType but a few say they're an "embedded subset". Time New Roman, which is the one that looks most obviously "shrunk" is NOT one of the embedded ones. For that one, it says Type: TrueType, Encoding Ansi, Actual Font: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT (or in some cases, ItalicMT), Actual Font Type: TrueType.

Not sure you needed all that but I figure in these cases, it's better to have info than need it. ^x^

Sounds like you're experiencing font substitution issues. Under the Acrobat tab in Word 2007, if you select Preferences, what setting is listed under the Conversion Settings: pulldown?

Not sure if you mean what was selected for the document or in general. I took a screen shot of it but apparently can't paste it into this field?
Selected for document: High Quality Print
Also available: Oversized pages, PDF/A-1b:2005 (CMYK), PDF/A-1b:2005 (RGB), PDF/X-1a:2001,PDF/X-3:2002, Press Quality, Smallest File Size, and Standard

The High Quality Print setting should embed all the fonts by default. Normally when embedding fails on this setting it will warn you and continue. Did you see any warnings? Perhaps this particular font has licensing that disallows embedding.

No, I didn't see any warnings at all when I went to convert it. I guess I wouldn't have thought Times New Roman of all fonts would have any special licensing but... anything can happen, right? ^x^

So do you think that the lack of embedding is what's causing the font to look 'squished'? and is there anything I can do to "force" the embedding? I know I have the option to set my own preferences and not use the standards I quoted in my prior post; is there anything in there I might be able to set?

Thanks again so much for your help!

Yes, the lack of embedding can be causing this because when the fonts aren't embedded then you'll experience substitution. So, we'll need to determine why the fonts aren't getting embedded - Times New Roman shouldn't give you problems.

Just as a test, try printing your PDF to the Adobe PDF printer and checking the results.

don't mean to be dense but do you mean I should open the WORD doc & "print to Adobe PDF printer" or do that to the (already created) PDF. I'm guessing the former but just want to be certain.

Sorry I wasn't clear. Try opening the file in Word 2007 and then printing the file to the Adobe PDF printer.

Hmmm... it's a little better but still doesn't match exactly. Holding them both to the light, it also appears the margins are slightly different.

I'm not sure it will make a difference but under Word Options in Word 2007, in the Save panel try selecting "Embed fonts in file". Also, make sure "Do not embed common system fonts" is unchecked.
Also, try making sure the Adobe PDF printer is selected as your default prior to creating the PDF from Word.

experiment with this: adobe printer, click preferences, on tab 'Adobe PDF Settings' clear tik at 'Rely on system fonts only ...'
also experiment: on Layout tab, click advanced, on dialog 'Adobe PDF Converter Advanced Document Settings' increase scaling setting by a pctg point or two.

rbogie & lkassuba: I will try both but may not be able to do so until late tomorrow. I do appreciate all your input & assistance, there's a lot of funding riding on the documentation. One would think that font size wouldn't matter (as they say) but they really do deduct points. I think they figure if you're using smaller font, you're trying to get around the "number of pages" limit. Ah well....

Thanks, this has helped me. The pdf font size is not exactly the same as coming from word. But it is very close... that's good enough for me :)

Thanks

oh my this is just too frustrating... I've tried all of the suggestions above and have also tried the following (in the Adobe printing preferences):
turning the "compression" off under Object Level Compression (preferences, Adobe PDF settings)
Changing True Type font setting to "download as softfont" (under preferences/Layout/Advanced)
Changing TrueType Download Option to Native True Type (paper/advanced/document options/postSCript Options)
(more to come...)

After trying all of the above and comparing the documents, it really looks to me as though the issue is somewhere in the margins. That is to say, when the document converts to PDF, it appears that the PDF margins are slightly wider than in the Word doc, which is, in turn, making the font compress to fit into the new margins. I've been looking around in the Adobe settings but I don't see anything about margins (thought turning the "Compression" setting off might make a difference but it didn't). BTW I had increased the scaling to 125% & still no change.
There are settings I don't understand that might help: in the Adobe PDF Printer PROPERTIES dialog under Device settings, there's "minimum font size to download as outline" and Max font size to download as Bitmap (both expressed in pixels) - would either of those help? Under the Advanced Tab, I find Print Processor settings - would anything in there help do you think?

Just another thought. See if it makes a difference if you change the following setting in Word 2007.
Word Options > Advanced at the very bottom open the Layout Options +. Then look for "Use printer metrics to lay out document" and check this.Then, make sure your Adobe PDF printer is selected as the default prior to creating your PDF.

Tried the Layout options thing but nope... still "shrinky dink" (ok I know I'm getting a little silly so please bear with me!)

It may not be an Acrobat problem at all, or one beyond Adobe’s control.

Word has a nasty habit of changing the formatting of a document with each change in default printers. In other words, a word document created with a HP LaserJet printer as the default printer, often experiences significant formatting changes if the document is then opened on a computer with a different default printer. These formatting changes may include changed margins, changed fonts and font sizes, changed page lengths, character substitutions, tab settings, to name a few that I have experienced. Microsoft has been unresponsive to my complaints about this issue and I have been complaining since Word 2.0. They just do not seem to recognize that it is a problem.

I believe that Word relies upon a PDF “printer driver” to create the PDF file. So, unless you create the document with the PDF printer driver as the default printer, when you attempt to print the PDF, Word will do its thing and reformat your document. This could certainly account for the changes in font size, margins, and etc. I do not know if this will solve your problem, but it’s worth a try. I generally use one of Microsoft’s competitors and have never experienced your particular issues.

Thanks Gary but it's definitely something happening in Adobe. As noted above, when I compare the printed document right out of Word against the same document "PDF'd" and printed, the text in the Adobe version is visually, and clearly, smaller. I've switched my default printer to the Adobe PDF & that didn't change a thing. It's just too bizarre and I can only hope the grant reviewers don't print the document & look at it against something that's really in 12pt font!

Found that adding in .png images to Word files then converting them to PDF can mess up font sizes, so might be an idea to convert .png to another format, perhaps like .jpg

I've also had this problem for ages and it's been driving me mad!

However I've found the solution at last, thanks to Michel Korwin-Szymanowski, who posted here - http://www.exp-systems.com/forum_exp/forum_posts.asp?TID=419

The issue comes from the Print settings of Acrobat Reader. In the Page Handling box, the Page Scaling should be set to None. The problem arises when it's set to Shrink to Printable Area, which is what I had it on.

Fix that and hopefully your problems will vanish!

Francis

Did you resolve problem with fonts. Have just had MS Word 07 loaded and every time I attempt to create a PDF of the Word document the Acrobat document changes the font on the front page and in the header and footer. The word document consists mainly of Arial with Arial Black and Arial Bold only on the front page. This inconsistency with the conversion has me beat as I have tried suggestion posted with no luck.

I have a client who uses MS Word 2007 on WinXP with embedded Excel spreadsheets in her documents. Some, but not all, of her embedded sheets were appearing as black boxes when published to pdf with Adobe through Word. When published to pdf through Word, though, the data would appear instead of black boxes, but the font would appear dark and "squished" and hard to read.

I didn't find a fix for the Word 2007 formatting issue, despite trying the suggestions listed here and many other things (because overall, the document looks fine; the font is only an issue in the embedded spreadsheets). But I did find that removing any Word formatting from the embedded spreadsheets, such as bolding or underlining (using borders was okay), elimated the black box issue and created a nice looking document when published to pdf with Adobe through Word.

Thanks also for pointing out the the the page scaling issue. That helped because we both noticed that the printed out pdfs had larger margins all the way around. ^_^

Also of note, my client was using Adobe 9 Standard and is now using Adobe 10 Standard, and I was testing with Adobe 9 Standard on a Windows 7 machine. My test files looked much better after conversion on a Windows 7 display than they did on XP - I didn't experience the dark/squishy-ness. Still a little confused about that and would love to hear if anyone else has come up with a resolution, but at least we solved one formatting quirk between the two that I hope may help someone else.