iPad export to PDF font problems

I have exactly the same problem with documents emailed from Numbers. Even the default Getting Started document causes Adobe Reader 8.1.0 to say:

Cannot extract the embedded font 'ZFDXOS+Helvetica-bold'. Some characters may not display or print correctly.

With Pages, I get things like:

Cannot extract the embedded font 'ZNHPUY+Didot'. Some characters may not display or print correctly.

Furthermore, under some circumstances the Adobe Reader actually crashes. (Running Windows XP with Firefox.) Most disconcerting - especially when you have multiple documents open for viewing.

I just installed Adobe Reader 9 on my Mac Mini and tried to open an emailed PDF. I get the same error messages seen above, and the fonts display as blobby gray dots.

Using Preview to look at the same PDF on the Mac shows everything correctly, with nary a complaint.

This sounds like more Apple trying to make something work and Adobe saying "It's our proprietary format, we don't have to be compatible, we don't have to document it, and you can just take your best guess about embedding fonts."

It would be REALLY stupid of Adobe to let the Flash war escalate into a Flash+Acrobat war.

This is a major problem. No answer from Apple so far. My iPad is useless for business until this major issue is fixed.

OK. You use iPad to send an iWork document (Pages, Numbers, etc.) as PDF to email. You can't open it with Adobe Reader on any system without getting Embedded Font problems. The Preview on Mac works fine.

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If you use iPad to view the email attachment, it works fine. Apparently using the Preview code. But you can only see the first page of ANY PDF in email on iPad. Does anybody know a trick to see the next pages of a PDF???

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If you use iPad to send the iWork file natively as email, you can open it in Pages on a Mac. If you use the Mac to export the file as PDF and THEN send it as an email attachment you can apparently open it anywhere, using any Adobe Reader.

This implies that the PDF Font Embedding code in all iWorks programs for iPad is hosed. But Apple does have the technology to do it right, as evidenced by the iWorks-on-Mac working correctly.

I have the same problem as described.

I have WinXP on my PC and numbers app is just useless now without the adobe font support from PDF files!

Everyone who has this problem should give Apple the details via feedback if you have not already done so:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Here's some more info. I just got the upload to iwork.com to work, and sent the Pages Getting Started file there. I then used by XP+Firefox browser to view the file in iwork.com. Works great. I then chose the "Download PDF to Print" button on the top tool bar. The PDF downloads and I try to open it with Adobe Reader 8.1.0.

It fails miserably with the embedded font message relating to "LIJOFT+Didot".
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I then did the same dance using my Mac Mini.

Safari display the file from iwork.com correctly. I do the "Download PDF". Preview shows the file correctly. Adobe Reader 9 fails with the same embedded font error.
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What have we learned?

Apparently the faulty code which fails to embed fonts correctly is common to iWorks programs on iPad AS WELL AS the PDF generation server at iwork.com. This is different from the code in iWorks applications that run on the Mac.

Is anyone from Apple listening??

Is anyone from Apple listening??

I gave you the link where they do listen. Post your stuff there. It's not realistic to think they spend much time wading through 50,000 irrelevant messages in these iPad user to user forums to find your posts.

Unfortunately, the feedback link is next-of-kin to useless. Getting no response from them, and not knowing how many others have similar complaints is just pi**ing in the wind. If I am going to go to all the trouble to analyze a problem in detail and document the parameters, I am not going to just "throw it over the fence" and hope for the best.
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To that end, I just got off the phone with Apple Support. They are aware of the problem and have a team working on it.

After discussing the issue at length, it seems that the best work-around is to use the iwork.com sharing gimmick. View the files from a browser and print (if needed) from the browser.

You cannot use the "download as PDF" from iwork.com, because it generates corrupted PDFs, just like iPad does.

It is also possible to be VERY selective about the fonts that are used when creating a document from scratch, but there is no easy way to know which fonts will work and which ones generate embedding errors.

In my experience, most of the new document templates will NOT work.
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Anyway, the upshot is that there will be an update to the iPad Apps that will fix the problem. They do not know when that will be.

It is suggested that the more complaints that they get about the issue, the faster it will be fixed. It is POSSIBLE that the feedback link may do something in this regard.

If this issue is important to you, I would suggest taking the time to visit
http://www.apple.com/support/expert/
and talk to a real, live, human being about the problem.

I just got off the telephone with Apple support describing a similar problem I had experienced, where the PDF looked great on my Mac, but in Adobe Acrobat Reader on a Windows PC the text was rendered as bullet characters (•). The representative confirmed this is a known issue in the PDF generation function of the iWork apps, and they're working on a fix.

Until the fix is available there are two workarounds:

+ Use a different font for the document. I had better results with Arial and Georgia, both MSFT fonts, but the Acrobat readers still complained about problems extracting the fonts from the document, however it was able to render the document so that it was readable.

+ mail or share the original iWork document from your iPad to your Mac, open it in the iWork apps on the Mac and create the PDF files from there.

Hope this helps...

For reference, here is the earlier thread on this topic begun right after the device was released:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11323169#11323169

same problem and this is really frustrating 😟
Appel a solutions and quickly please !
otherwise iWork is useless for me !

Appel a solutions and quickly please !

The place to tell them is here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

the reason the fonts arent embedding is because you are holding the ipad in the wrong way, try using a bumper...^_^

it's probably an issue with lack of the fonts on the Windows PC. It is also possible for them to import fonts onto their PC, but, I do not know of any iPad Font packs being supplied for download onto PC by Apple, though I think it a good idea to improve iPad compatibility.

Same issue. Create a file in pages on iPad. Mail as PDF, view in Acrobat and I always get embeded font error.

iWork or for the more appropriate, iPad is useless for work flow if I can not get Pages to create documents that are viewable without embeded errors.

Sent feedback and hope this gets fixed. Sending as word destroys alignment & spacing so that is no answer.