In addition to this advice, IF you have Adobe (Acrobat) Distiller installed, you have the option to print to PDF using the printer dialog and choosing the Adobe PDF printer driver. In the properties of this driver, there is a check box to specify embedding of fonts. This is usually unchecked by default for copyright reasons. There may be freeware PDF printer driver options as well.
Commented Sep 8, 2011 at 16:48 @RedGrittyBrick : Thanks! I now have good starting point with your suggestions. Commented Sep 8, 2011 at 18:51Since you do not require MS Word -- how about using OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice?
Both these have a menu item 'File -> Export as PDF. '.
Make sure you activate the checkbox PDF/A-1a -- this will guarantee compliance with the PDF/A-1a standard which requires all fonts to be embedded. This way the files display and print the same across all platforms (The 'A' in PDF/A means the file meets the 'archiving' standard.)
answered Nov 25, 2011 at 12:23 Kurt Pfeifle Kurt Pfeifle 12.8k 3 3 gold badges 56 56 silver badges 72 72 bronze badgesUnfortunately this is not guaranteed for fillable PDF forms (see bug 50879), as they cannot be saved as PDF/A.
Commented May 14, 2019 at 14:33 @AntonSamsonov: True. But who needs exact font rendering in fillable forms, anyway? Commented May 14, 2019 at 14:37Those millions (billions) of people who happen to use non-latin scripts. Existing bugs in both PDF-generating and PDF-viewing/editing software result in that non-latin symbols are either not rendered at all or garbled.
Commented May 15, 2019 at 15:46@AntonSamsonov: Oh!, thanks for reminding me! I admit that I tend to be dump enough to forget the fact that the world is not using latin scripts only.
Commented May 15, 2019 at 22:01@AntonSamsonov: PDF/A-1b/1a (basic/advanced) however does not support fillable forms at all. In order to preserve the contents of a filled form, the form has to be "flattened" first (integrating its content into the standard PDF contents) -- where it will have all font support as usual.
Commented May 15, 2019 at 22:05Sure-fire way: Scan the printed document, or convert it to an image (not a modified hypertext image like Excel does sometimes, but a JPG or BMP) and then pdf that.
By converting to an image you're working with a picture, not code that can be misconstrued or mistranslated by other systems.
Of course, doing it this way will result in generally larger files and depending on whether you have to scan a printed document to create the image, you may end up with a lower quality output. But you will never have to worry out Arial being converted into a frilly odd font.