PPT 2007: On sending PPTs to other people, all the fonts change

**amakeler** · 2012-01-09 14:23

Hi all,

A customer of mine tells me that when she sends PPTs to other people, all the fonts "change". That's as much info as I have right now, but I assume she means that the font names change and also the sizes change.

I don't know PPT so well, but I know Word very well. When something like that happens to a Word document it is because either the other people have different printer settings, or the 'Automatically update document styles' (to the attached template styles) option is selected.

What factors in PPT could cause this effect? I guess 'different printer settings' is also relevant to PPT, but is there some PPT analog also for 'Automatically update document styles'?

TIA

avraham

**generic_e** · 2012-01-09 15:45

Hi amakeler,

This sounds like a font embedding issue. If your client is using non-standard fonts, e.g. those not installed with Windows -- especially if their version of Windows is older -- and if those fonts are not explicitly embedded in the presentation, then Windows will do font substitution, which will cause the fonts to be substituted with what Windows considers a close approximation.

Have a look at this article: http://blogs.office.com/b/office_blo...sentation.aspx

Good luck!

**amakeler** · 2012-01-10 03:01

Hi generic_e, Great thanks for the quick answer.

I have checked and the PPT settings (in Save options) say fonts are already embedded.

I just got some more clarification from the client. The fonts themselves stay the same, e.g.,

Myriad Pro always stays Myriad Pro.

But the problem seems to be to do with size: when the client hands out the presentations, sometimes text seems to expand beyond its textbox width limit and then wrap around. In fact I see this in front of me. There is a "THANK YOU" slide, and on my client's PC it looks fine, but on my PC the "THANK YOU" has become too wide for the text box and the "U" has wrapped around to sit underneath the "T" on the line below.

Client says that she has already asked a number of people, and nobody knows. (Worse comes to worse I will have to solve it by programming VBA.)

More ideas?

TIA

-avraham

**Gary Frieder** · 2012-01-10 08:20

Hi avraham,

generic_e's response is still probably correct - this is probably a font substitution problem.

Is your client by any chance producing her presentations on a Mac? - Myriad Pro is commonly found on Macs, but is not a Windows/Office font.

Not sure how the font embedding options work on PowerPoint for Mac, but at least in Windows, you can only embed a font that's a TrueType font. Myriad Pro is an Adobe/OpenType font so it may not be embeddable.

By the way, just because the font dialog says the font is Myriad Pro, doesn't mean that what is displayed is actually Myriad Pro. If font substitution is taking place, the font dialog will still display the name of the original font - even though another font is actually being substituted for it. One way to confirm this: click on the font dialog, and scroll up and down the list of font names - if Myriad Pro doesn't appear in the alphabetical list of fonts, then font substitution is taking place.

Gary

**generic_e** · 2012-01-10 08:35

I agree with Gary. And one more thing to try is to change the font to a "common" font, if possible. If the font/size remains consistent on yours and the client's machines then it is proof positive that font substitution is occurring.

I'm not sure why after embedding the fonts there would still be an issue. One possibility is that the font is not "embeddable". Not all fonts can be embedded; the font's license determines this. In Windows, the licensing info is viewable in the properties of the font file -- "Font Embeddability". So if the font is not embeddable you cannot embed it in your presentation, although PPT may not alert you to this when you attempt to do so.

**amakeler** · 2012-01-10 13:16

>>

Myriad Pro is commonly found on Macs,
That's an idea. I didn't remember seeing Myriad Pro on my PC before.

If font substitution is taking place, the font dialog will still display the name of the original font - even though another font is actually being substituted for it. One way to confirm this: click on the font dialog, and scroll up and down the list of font names - if Myriad Pro doesn't appear in the alphabetical list of fonts, then font substitution is taking place.

>> If font substitution is taking place, the font dialog will still display the name of the original font - even though another font is actually being substituted for it. One way to confirm this: click on the font dialog, and scroll up and down the list of font names - if Myriad Pro doesn't appear in the alphabetical list of fonts, then font substitution is taking place.

Excellent idea.

Ok - I checked.

Myriad Pro does appear in the alphabetical list of fonts, and I successfully used it in a new slide in the same presentation.
So back to square 1?
----------

But let's say the author is using a Mac and then she sends the PPT to other people all with PCs, then isn't that sufficient to cause things to go a bit awry and then need fixing...?

-avraham

**amakeler** · 2012-01-10 13:17

>> And one more thing to try is to change the font to a "common" font, if possible. If the font/size remains consistent on yours and the client's machines then it is proof positive that font substitution is occurring.

Good test idea. But I think they really are embedded.

-avraham

**amakeler** · 2012-01-11 02:23

If the author is using a Mac and then she sends the PPT to other people all with PCs, then isn't that sufficient to cause sizes of fonts to change ?

In Powerpoint 2007 is there a way to convert texts to curves? The

author on her Mac could convert texts to curves and only then send out the PPT. (But then the recipients won't be able to edit the text so easily.)

-avraham

**generic_e** · 2012-01-11 08:32

You do not say if you have determined that the font is embeddable. So even if it is available on your machine, when you attempt to embed it and send the presentation to your client the font will be substituted unless they definitively have the same font installed on all machines that they open the presentation on.

**JohnWilson** · 2012-01-14 08:14

Another thing to check is that both the sender and recipient have defauly LOCAL printer drivers selected. Weirdly this matters!

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