Why Original PDF Font Changed After Conversion (Conversion)?

Bạch Huy Hoàng
Jun 18, 2021
3 min read

After converting PDF to Word, you may see fonts that are not exactly the same as the original PDF in the output Word document. The Lighten PDF Converter applications will analyze the font data in the PDF and calculate the font width and height to keep the original formatting in the output documents. In some cases, if the font is not available, is not supported by the output formats, or the font information cannot be accessed, PDF Converter will use a predefined font like 'Times New Roman' or closest match instead of the original font.

The following situations will cause this problem.

1.Fonts are not available on your system.

If the fonts in the PDF file are not available on your computer, Lighten PDF Converter cannot keep the original fonts. For example, if the PDF author purchased a commercial font and used it in the PDF, which is not available in your font book. You can't even find the font in Microsoft Word's font list, so our app can't keep the original font.

2.Fonts are available in the system font book, but Microsoft Office does not support them.

The fonts may be listed in your system font book, but those fonts are actually not supported by Microsoft Office, so after conversion, the output Word document doesn't display the fonts correctly. . In this case, PDF Converter will also choose the closest result instead of the original font during the conversion.

3. Additional Fonts in PDF

To ensure that the PDF can be viewed as it should in any device, screen or system, the author can include fonts in the PDF file. They can embed a full copy of the font with all the characters, or embed a subset of the characters used in the PDF. In this case, the font name might be a random character instead of the actual font name. Readers can still view the original PDF without problems, but it makes converting the PDF more difficult.

Let's say the author used 'Arial' in the PDF, while the application that created the PDF simply marked the font as 'font1'. In this case, even if the system has 'Arial' in the font book, the output Word document cannot have the correct font. Lighten PDF Converter will look for 'font1' instead of 'Arial' in the font book and it will choose the closest match if it can't find the same font.

Font problems are one of the most common problems for PDF conversions. All PDF Converter applications are available in the market, even Adobe Acrobat cannot keep all fonts after conversion. The Lighten PDF Converter application can find the closest match in most cases and make the output look as accurate as possible. But there is still a lot of work to be done to keep all the fonts correct.