Problem embedding fonts in PP2007

[Luca Brasi]

While migrating some templates from PowerPoint XP to 2007 (by building
them manually from scratch) I noticed that I get an error when trying to
embed some fonts. These (rather old) fonts were once designed to
implement a special corporate design of a company. They used to work
without any problems in Office XP (even when embedded).

Now embedding these fonts in 2007, I get the error ("Some of your fonts
cannot be saved with the presentation") on machines with Windows XP and
Office 2007 installed. But only if I select the option to "Embed
characters IN USE". "Embed ALL characters" works fine.

Besides, in Word 2007 these fonts can be embedded using any embedding
option available. Also astonishing for me: On machines with Windows
VISTA and Office 2007 there's no problem at all!

I tried this on four machines (2x XP, 2x Vista). The newest service
packs and patches for Windows/Office are installed.

Can anyone reproduce such a behavior or even understand why the error
does occur? Does the used OS really have an influence on the "embed
fonts" functionality?

Thanks for any hints.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I don't have an answer, but here are a few things you might investigate.

Definitely get a copy of Microsoft's font properties extension:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/FreeToolsOverview.mspx

Once installed, you can rightclick on any font and get a wealth of information.
It'd be interesting to install it under both Vista and XP to see whether the
two versions say the same thing about the font's embedding properties.

I do know that with some older fonts created with Fontographer, there were
embedding problems with Acrobat, and this might be something similar.
Apparently the font can store a number that indicates which of several levels
of embeddability it supports. Old versions of Fontographer stored gibberish
there, not any of the valid numbers.

Some applications would look at the number, see that it didn't match any known
embeddability value and conclude that the font was unembeddable. Later
versions of Acrobat were changed to allow certain types of embedding IF the
font's embeddability number was not one of the valid ones.

Something like that may be at work here.

 

[Luca Brasi]

Steve, many thanks for your info.
I did some more testing and installed the font properties extension. I
even installed a trial version of a font creation software and compared
the properties of different fonts. But still I got no clue why some
fonts don't allow the "characters in use" embed option under Windows XP
while it works fine under Vista.

Against my first statement, the used Office version doesn't seem to have
any influence (the error occurs in PP XP and 2007).

As I know now that I have to test any fonts (that should be embedded in
a presentation) in all Windows versions a client may use, it's no more a
problem to me.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Steve, many thanks for your info.
I did some more testing and installed the font properties extension. I
even installed a trial version of a font creation software and compared
the properties of different fonts. But still I got no clue why some
fonts don't allow the "characters in use" embed option under Windows XP
while it works fine under Vista.

Against my first statement, the used Office version doesn't seem to have
any influence (the error occurs in PP XP and 2007).

I would guess that PPT queries Windows for this information; perhaps the two
Windows versions are returning different results. But that doesn't make sense
either, because Word works on either Windows version.

As I know now that I have to test any fonts (that should be embedded in
a presentation) in all Windows versions a client may use, it's no more a
problem to me.

If you're looking at the .Embedded and .Embeddable properties of the font from
within PPT's Fonts collection, test very carefully before relying on it. I just
did some quick tests in PPT 2003 SP2 and it seems to be totally broken.

 

[Luca Brasi]

Thanks for the info about the two "embed" properties. I will keep that
in mind.
In the mentioned case, I didn't do anything with VBA. Just tried to
manually embed the font and the error occurs...
Must be a rather rare problem... think I won't solve it and better pass