# Does anyone understand how Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat share information about font size? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 17, 2017, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098 "2017-10-17T01:06:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/41 "2017-10-18T03:48:13Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I always liked those Monotype machines. I don’t like lead poisoning, though. I’m looking for a Monotype but am holding out little hope. There’s very little chance of lead poisoning from handling type or slugs. Metallic lead is not skin soluble. I used to get my blood lead levels checked over year and it was always below detectable levels ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/42 "2017-10-18T03:55:48Z")
> [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > It’s not! Say the word and I can have one on a truck headed your way in no time! When recruiting biology research faculty, one of the important things for a school to show off is the expertise and equipment of the services that all the researchers share (called “core facilities”). I’m picturing showing a faculty candidate around the campus: “Here is our confocal microscope core with two 4-laser Zeiss 880’s and live imaging incubators, here is our next-gen sequencing core with attached bioinformatics analysts, here is our proteomics core with single-cell capabilities, here is our Linotype core with daily lead deliveries for your grant submissions. We also have a phenomenal team for making woodcut figure illustrations.” Anyone who keeps a straight face, I would hire on the spot. However, if you’re genuinely shipping out Linotype machines… I might have to talk to my partner. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/43 "2017-10-18T04:13:30Z")
> [@mischievous](#): > > However, if you’re genuinely shipping out Linotype machines… I might have to talk to my partner. Now let’s be clear, I don’t have a dozen machines sitting in my driveway waiting for a shipping label, but I am part of a loose network of odd people that work to save these machines from salvage as they come available. There aren’t many, but [they’re out there](https://farm8.static.flickr.com/7200/6840317534_1a4bb67f30_b.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/44 "2017-10-18T04:29:08Z")
BTW, I read Knuth’s book on typesetting, and it seems he actually studied traditional and hot-metal typesetting when designing his computer system, hence the way it works by assembling blocks of type into horizontal boxes and stacking those in vertical boxes. One can still use his TeX system directly to recapture that feel of manipulating type, although most users use one of the various high-level macro or style files like LaTeX or ConTeXt so as not to have to mess with it. ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/45 "2017-10-18T04:31:28Z")
> [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > Now let’s be clear, I don’t have a dozen machines sitting in my driveway waiting for a shipping label, but I am part of a loose network of odd people that work to save these machines from salvage as they come available. There aren’t many, but [they’re out there](https://farm8.static.flickr.com/7200/6840317534_1a4bb67f30_b.jpg). That’s awesome. But as much as I like to think of myself as an odd person, I have neither the space nor the skill set for a Linotype. It warms my heart that you’re saving them, though. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/46 "2017-10-18T22:32:40Z")
I hate to be that guy, and I 100% understand that this does not resolve the issue, but if you know it works on Windows, you can’t have your workplace spring for a cheap Windows laptop to create these PDF files? I mean, for all the effort you’ve spent doing what you’re doing, the payroll savings alone would be a dozen laptops’ worth. This is the very definition of “penny wise, pound foolish”. If worse comes to worse, just have someone bring in a laptop from home for a couple days until the file’s correct. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/47 "2017-10-18T23:16:53Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#): > > I hate to be that guy, and I 100% understand that this does not resolve the issue, but if you know it works on Windows, you can’t have your workplace spring for a cheap Windows laptop to create these PDF files? > > I mean, for all the effort you’ve spent doing what you’re doing, the payroll savings alone would be a dozen laptops’ worth. This is the very definition of “penny wise, pound foolish”. > > If worse comes to worse, just have someone bring in a laptop from home for a couple days until the file’s correct. Or for that matter, run Windows on the Mac with VMWare Fusion occasionally. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/48 "2017-10-18T23:34:22Z")
I haven’t read every post (sorry!) but I’ll throw a suggestion into the mix… On Windows at least, Microsoft Word has an option when exporting as PDF to create an ISO 19005-1 (PDF/A) compliant document. This has always solved font problems for me, as part of the compliance is (I think) to embed font information directly in the document. I use this option every time I submit anything that might be viewed across platforms. A downside is that non-compliant features (e.g., transparent objects) break, but I bet you are not replying on any non-compliant features, and you will be able to check simply enough that things render correctly via the PDF. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/49 "2017-10-18T23:38:28Z")
Well, I’ve tried just about every combination of tools I can think of to see if there’s an Apple system component or something in the Adobe environment that’s doing this and it all points to Word for Mac being the problem child. I even saved a PostScript file out of word to manually distill with no luck. The type size is already altered in the raw PS file. I eliminated the driver as being a culprit by trying a few different ones. So when the pathway is that Word uses it’s own PDF creation engine (best for electronic distribution), it does the job correctly. When Word uses any other pathway to create a PDF by writing PostScript via CUPS or Quartz, it’s passing along funky values. Most notably, Adobe knows about this and blames Microsoft. In the case below, they’re specifically talking about Word on a PC, but the issue sounds like it’s identical, down to the same governmental constraint being the pain point. It also would seem that Microsoft has ‘fixed’ the problem for some types of export options (and maybe all of them on a PC) but not for the important ones on a Mac. > [@Some dude at Adobe](#): > > This is a problem that has plagued applications under Windows going back well over 20 years! > > The issue of the resultant text size in PDF files being a small fraction of a point different from that specified in the application is due to how these Windows applications output either via print or the internal pathway used for creation of PDF with either Microsoft or Adobe tools. The text you specify in your Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) as 11 point type may appear as 10.98 point or 11.04 point in the resultant PDF file. [https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1726025](https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1726025) ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/50 "2017-10-18T23:41:47Z")
> [@Pasta](#): > > On Windows at least, Microsoft Word has an option when exporting as PDF to create an ISO 19005-1 (PDF/A) compliant document. Not an option in the current version of Word for Mac. You only get ‘best for electronic distribution’ which rasterizes everything very low-res and uses a dodgy CMS so as to ruin image colors, or you can use best for print which does a better job with images but messes up the type size. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/51 "2017-10-19T01:47:14Z")
> [@mischievous](#): > > … There were 78 lines that looked like the one that you posted (\<\\>), and it wasn’t clear which ones referred to what text, and they all contained many font sizes. Interestingly, even though the entire document is supposed to be 11.0pt only a few contained “11 0”, which I assume is 11.0pt, and none contained “10 8”, which I would guess is 10.8pt. > … The numbers following the object names are index values. So the font object F1 is object 5, and F5 is object 17. The parent object for this page is object 2, and this page uses the resources F1…F5. If you look farther down, you might be able to find object 5, and when you do, it may tell you that it is an Arial font… which I guess doesn’t get us any farther along, because the font is resizable, and we already know the font name. What we have to find is the place where F1 (or object 5 0) is used, because that is probably where the font size information is. … I wonder, is Arial a native PDF font? when you do it on a Windows machine, is it using an Adobe font, or a Windows font? ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/52 "2017-10-19T01:58:26Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > … I wonder, is Arial a native PDF font? when you do it on a Windows machine, is it using an Adobe font, or a Windows font? It’s TrueType, but I tested with OpenType fonts as well with the same result. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/53 "2017-10-19T02:05:10Z")
I was in fact curious (if **Pork Rind** and **mischievous** are still at it) whether the files with the messed-up sizes have the same line and page breaks as the correct version. If they do, then _maybe_ manually fixing the size in the Postscript or PDF would produce acceptable results (although the OP already said scaling it in Acrobat is no good). If not, or if it makes things ugly, then it is pointless digging through the file. Now that we know for sure it is a Word for Mac problem with no known workaround, I still have nothing better than my original suggestion to use some or all of Windows, Libreoffice, and/or LaTeX. If your lab has no Windows available, OK, but the other two are freely downloadable software. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/54 "2017-10-19T02:42:03Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I was in fact curious (if **Pork Rind** and **mischievous** are still at it) whether the files with the messed-up sizes have the same line and page breaks as the correct version. If they do, then _maybe_ manually fixing the size in the Postscript or PDF would produce acceptable results (although the OP already said scaling it in Acrobat is no good). If not, or if it makes things ugly, then it is pointless digging through the file. > > Now that we know for sure it is a Word for Mac problem with no known workaround, I still have nothing better than my original suggestion to use some or all of Windows, Libreoffice, and/or LaTeX. If your lab has no Windows available, OK, but the other two are freely downloadable software. I didn’t try it with a large doc, just a couple words at each size, but in theory it’s resizable in Acrobat. The challenge will be that even with the minimal 10.8 -\> 11 pt adjustment, it will likely wreck the justification. And it will be really difficult for someone without good preflight tools to change the type size across a sizeable document, each individual line of type is its own page object. Nevertheless, I’ll try this tomorrow. A bottle of Armagnac has already made its appearance, so no operating heavy machinery. ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/55 "2017-10-19T06:51:20Z")
> [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > Well, I’ve tried just about every combination of tools I can think of to see if there’s an Apple system component or something in the Adobe environment that’s doing this and it all points to Word for Mac being the problem child. I even saved a PostScript file out of word to manually distill with no luck. The type size is already altered in the raw PS file. I eliminated the driver as being a culprit by trying a few different ones. Wow. I super appreciate all the work. It is still _incredibly frustrating_ that there is no clean fix for this. I think I will take everyone’s advice and install Office Suite on the Windows computers that run our big microscopes, and I can do the final conversion there. It’s going to be hilarious to explain to the rest of the lab why I’m reserving microscope time at grant deadlines, but they’re a good group of people and they all understand that the grants pay their salaries. ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/56 "2017-10-19T07:15:06Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I was in fact curious (if **Pork Rind** and **mischievous** are still at it) whether the files with the messed-up sizes have the same line and page breaks as the correct version. If they do, then _maybe_ manually fixing the size in the Postscript or PDF would produce acceptable results (although the OP already said scaling it in Acrobat is no good). If not, or if it makes things ugly, then it is pointless digging through the file. Whoops, I totally missed that there was a second page of replies. I think this may be the most popular thread I’ve ever started. As far as I can tell, the line and page breaks in Mac Word at 11pt are the same as the ones in converted file from the Windows Word, so Windows isn’t making the font any larger. > [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > I didn’t try it with a large doc, just a couple words at each size, but in theory it’s resizable in Acrobat. The challenge will be that even with the minimal 10.8 -\> 11 pt adjustment, it will likely wreck the justification. And it will be really difficult for someone without good preflight tools to change the type size across a sizeable document, each individual line of type is its own page object. I tried resizing in Acrobat, and it’s an unfixable mess. Each page is broken up into 5-10 text boxes, and if you expand the font size, the boxes overlap and have hanging lines, so there are big chunks of the page with overlapping text. Also, all of the many superscripts and subscripts are now rendered at full font size (but still raised or lowered), which introduces huge gaps between lines to compensate. Even if I had all the time in the world to manually fix the superscript font for every reference and shift text between boxes so that it flows, I’m not sure that I could make it work. ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/57 "2017-10-19T07:27:07Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Windows, Libreoffice, and/or LaTeX. If your lab has no Windows available, OK, but the other two are freely downloadable software. If it were just me, changing to Libre or LaTeX would be more feasible, but these are collaborative documents and I doubt I can get all the players on board with changing software - especially since Word is the standard for everything else they do. However, I’m curious about trying LaTeX for the final document conversion. I’m downloading it now and going to bed. I’ll be traveling tomorrow, but I’ll try it out on Friday and report back. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/58 "2017-10-19T09:35:34Z")
Just a quick question: does Word not allow font sizes between 11.0 and 11.5? If you picked 11.204 or 11.21, you’d in theory be quite close (though that part with multiples of 12 makes me wonder.) I also agree with the VM suggestion, at least as a stopgap. You can get an unactivated version of Windows and Virtualbox for free. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/59 "2017-10-19T14:45:04Z")
> [@mischievous](#): > > However, I’m curious about trying LaTeX for the final document conversion. I’m downloading it now and going to bed. I’ll be traveling tomorrow, but I’ll try it out on Friday and report back. LaTeX is not a converter. You would have to prepare your document using a style file set up for NIH grants (which people have done and you can download, or you could make one yourself by telling it the margins, font size, and so on), copy the text from the original document into your new one, and edit it a bit until everything is perfect. This would be pretty easy to do if you were the only one editing the document— there may even be a script around to automate the conversion, and there are guides online on how to prepare NIH grant submissions using LaTeX— but with your co-authors all using Word I doubt they would appreciate you turning a Word file into a format that has absolutely nothing to do with Word. LibreOffice, on the other hand, was designed specifically to be a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, and can read and write Word-format files. All you need to do is use it to open the .doc files and export/print as PDF. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2017, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098/60 "2017-10-19T15:09:02Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Just a quick question: does Word not allow font sizes between 11.0 and 11.5? If you picked 11.204 or 11.21, you’d in theory be quite close (though that part with multiples of 12 makes me wonder.) > > I also agree with the VM suggestion, at least as a stopgap. You can get an unactivated version of Windows and Virtualbox for free. Just tried. Word for Mac doesn’t allow for non-integer type sizes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-understand-how-microsoft-word-and-adobe-acrobat-share-information-about-font-size/799098.md?page=4)