"Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

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David.P
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"Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by David.P »

Hi forum & Tracker support team,

With a certain PDF file of mine, I get this error message in Adobe Reader:
Image

The above is a sample screenshot (in English) from the web. My screenshot with the actual name of the corrupted font is this one:
Image

The PDF in question contains lots of different page types (text, drawings, bitmaps, OCR'ed pages etc., put together from many different sources).

I did not get that error with this file until about a year ago. Possibly it is related to a more recent bug in Adobe Reader that is described here. So while there is that patch over there that might or might not work, patching Adobe Reader in this case is not a viable solution, because I cannot tell the target audience of my PDF file to install that patch before viewing my file.

Therefore my question is, is there a way to determine on what page in the PDF that problematic font is actually used -- in order to remove or replace that page, including the corrupted font?

Unfortunately, the font in question is not listed under "embedded fonts" in the Optimize PDF dialog of PDF-XChange Editor. The font only turns up in the document properties dialog, where it however can't be located or removed. This is probably due to the fact that it is not an embedded, "external" font but instead has been produced and embedded by Adobe Acrobat's ClearScan OCR function.

Thanks for any help or ideas about how the font could be located!

David.P
David.P
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Patrick-Tracker Supp
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Re: "Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by Patrick-Tracker Supp »

Hi David,
Though I suppose it's an Adobe bug, you could send us the file so we can take a look. As far as I know, there is no way to know what page the font is used on because embedded fonts are embedded to the document, and not a just a page.
Thanks!
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Cheers,

Patrick Charest
Tracker Support North America
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Lzcat - Tracker Supp
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Re: "Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by Lzcat - Tracker Supp »

Hi David.
Which tools and source files did you used to create that file?
Regarding problem font - it was not embedded by us, so it must came from external file. So there is two possibilities:
1. Font was already broken (in source file), and in this case we can do nothing.
2. Original font was good, but it was broken during file modifications. And if that modification was done by one of our products we should fix this.
So please try to recreate problem step-by-step and check result after each step - we need to know how reproduce problem itself.
Thanks.
Victor
Tracker Software
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David.P
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Re: "Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by David.P »

Thank you Patrick and Victor,

That file is very "old" and has been edited and rearranged probably thousands of times. I extracted the problematic pages (the ones OCR'ed with Ad*be's Clearscan, which actually creates and embeds vector fonts and replaces the scanned bitmap text with real text). Then I reassembled the file from the pieces I had made from it -- which would make the error disappear at first. However, the error came back as soon as I started editing the file again (like, only changing bookmarks).

I ended up recreating the problematic pages as bitmaps (with PDF-XChange Editor's function "Export to images", which is amazing because you can exactly choose dpi, compression and color depth). Then I OCR'ed these pages again, however not with Acr*bat Clearscan, but with PDF-XChange Editor (adding a hidden text layer to the unmodified bitmap). In this case, I should not have used Ad*be Clearscan from the beginning, because the pages in question contain job references and it may look doubtful if these contain actual (editable) text :P

Actually, I had used Acr*bat Clearscan originally because it's still THE benchmark when it comes to the quality vs. filesize ratio of scanned PDF documents, where Clearscan beats everything else by about one or two orders of magnitude :o

Thanks again for your above helpful comments,

Best regards
David
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: "Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi,
So is it safe to assume that this case is closed now and we are all good to go?
From the sounds of it, you solved the problem by stepping away from Adobe even further. :)
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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David.P
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Re: "Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by David.P »

Yes, exacty :)
David.P
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Re: "Cannot extract the embedded font Error" in Adobe Reader

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Perfect!, glad to hear it :)
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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