Try Acrobat DC
These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from the community.


Problem Creating PDFs - Printing PDF Opens in Notepad with Error re Font.

I have the following problem:

(a) a few days ago my Adobe Acrobat 8.0 stopped creating pdfs, giving the following error message in notepad:

%%[ Error: typecheck; OffendingCommand: findfont ]%%

Stack:
/Font
(Courier)
/courier


%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

(b) prior to this issue, I believe I may have removed certain printers that were not being used on my computer. But I do not remember if this were or were not prior to the problem. In any event,I tried to no avail printing to pdf from both within the Adobe software and from the MS Office products.

(c) on my own, I installed and uninstalled Adobe Acrobat 8.0 with no resolution.

(d) the first level tech support told me to install Adobe XI, trial version, and that would solve the problem. That did not and she could not help further.

(e) today, I spoke with a second level tech support at Adobe, who indicated that he was certain the problem was correctable by him, by going variously into the computer's log files for the error, and correcting certain preferences, and possibly correcting the printing, etc. He thought it is possible that by removing
one or more of the printers, that I removed something associated with the Adobe file.

He could only assist, however, if I upgrade to Adobe XI, as opposed to the trial version. I am holding off doing this because I work with 2000 MS Word (it is associated with an Act database that I have) and I do no want to have compatibility issues with the new software.

The optimal solution would be to find and repair the problems with my 2008 Adobe Acrobat installation.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Clyde


Clyde JEsman


11 Answers

Clyde,

Acrobat 8 has reached it's end of life, so you can no longer get support from Adobe for this version. Not even Acrobat 9 is supported anymore. This makes the information you got from Adobe understandable.

Which version of Windows are you running on? Is this version compatible with Acrobat 8? If you are running on a not supported version of the OS, and you ended up with e.g. an update to Windows, that may have broken your PDF printer.

You can try to fix this by running the Repair function, which you can find under the Help menu. If it's a problem caused by a Windows update, there is unfortunately nothing you can do.

Karl Heinz Kremer
PDF Acrobatics Without a Net
PDF Software Development, Training and More...
http://www.khkonsulting.com


Karl Heinz Kremer   

Thank you, though I am told that the issue is correctable (albeit not supported for the version) and involves correcting some errors in the certain preferences, once the specific issue causing the error is determined through the admin log. If you see my question, Adobe Acrobat XI does not work either.


Clyde JEsman   

The error —

%%[ Error: typecheck; OffendingCommand: findfont ]%%

Stack:
/Font
(Courier)
/courier


%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%



means you do not have the require font (Courier) installed/available to Distiller.


Be well...


David Austin   

Thank you. Do you know of a way to correct the issue then? Resintalling Adobe does not solve the problem and I am told that preferences must be changed. I note that Courier is not a font I use and does not exist in MS Word but is in my other MS Excel.


Clyde JEsman   

Have you tried to use a different font in your document that you want to convert to PDF?

Courier is part of the operating system. It is possible that your font location information got modified and Distiller is no longer able to find the fonts. Open up Distiller, then click on the "Settings>Font Locations". This will bring up a dialog that has a number of font directories. Make sure that the Windows font directory is listed (on Win7 that is C:\Windows\Fonts). However, because you are getting the same results with a fresh install of Acrobat XI, I doubt that this is the problem.

Win7 does not let me delete the Courier font because it is part of the operating system. So again, which version of Windows are you using? Do you see Courier (or Courier Regular) in your fonts directory?

Karl Heinz Kremer
PDF Acrobatics Without a Net
PDF Software Development, Training and More...
http://www.khkonsulting.com


Karl Heinz Kremer   

I don't in fact use the courier font at all in any of my documents.

I went into the Distiller software, preferences and note that the font "Courier" is not listed in C:\Windows\Fonts but it is listed under C:\Program Files\Rapidocs, under the preferences listing. Rapidocs is a software that I downloaded this past week and it may be the source of the problem.

In My Documents, I see Courier listed as a font, but it does not appear in the Distiller Software under C:\Windows\Fonts, but only under C:\Program Files\Rapidocs. It has a different extension - it is labeled not as a TTF but as FON. I am not sure of the significance since it does appear in Distiller, albeit under a different path name,but it is suspicous as the error message in notepad is pointing to it.

Perhaps I can copy it somehow and rename it as TTF? Perhaps when I downloaded the new software, it was converted from a TTF to its own name, FON?


Clyde JEsman   

I am confused though, because in my home computer, I open the files in MS Word and I don't even see Courier as a font - although I do see Courier Regular


Clyde JEsman   

Distiller uses Courier as a substitution font if the font that is request is not available. Maybe that is what's happening, and for whatever reason, Distiller cannot find Courier.

Try this: Download these two files and double-click on them. Do you get any of the error messages from before? Does any of the two files create a PDF file?

Karl Heinz Kremer
PDF Acrobatics Without a Net
PDF Software Development, Training and More...
http://www.khkonsulting.com


Karl Heinz Kremer   

Thanks, but I'm getting an error message after trying to move to Windows\Fonts, saying unable to install font. The font file has a .ps, and the fonts I have in the windows are .TTF - would this be the problem?


Clyde JEsman   

Okay, so it seems that the answer was simple and had little to do with Adobe. The windows system courier font file was apparently corrupted. A download of the font returned everything back to normal in Adobe. Because the font had been corrupted, Adobe was unable to complete its protocol.

Only problem is that I had originally listened to the first level tech at Adobe who advised me that the fix is by upgrading to Adobe XI from Adobe 8. When I did this, the problem was not resolved though.

Simply installing the corrupted/missing font to my windows system corrected the Adobe issue in Adobe XI-

HOWEVER, when we uninstalled Adobe XI (which cost about $500 to purchase, just to fix a missing font file) and attempted to reinstall Adobe 8 (which had been working fine, up to the corrupted font issue), Adobe 8 did not operate at all - all the distiller files appeared to be missing.

Possibly something in Adobe XI remains on my system during the uninstall and conflicts with Adobe 8. Prior to installing Adobe XI, I had uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe 8 without problem. It is just after having installed and uninstalled Adobe XI, and reinstalled Adobe 8 that there is now a problem.

If anyone knows what the issue could be, I'd appreciate the insight. Otherwise, I hope to contact Adobe itself for support.


Clyde JEsman   

Unfortunately, customer service is not always right.

It is possible that something got left over from your installation. I would run the Cleaner application that Adobe has for this case: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/acrobatcleaner.html

Karl Heinz Kremer
PDF Acrobatics Without a Net
PDF Software Development, Training and More...
http://www.khkonsulting.com


Karl Heinz Kremer   

Please specify a reason: