True confessions: I still use Microsoft Word to format my book interiors. It's not perfect -- but neither am I. I can do a pretty good job with Word if I take the time to pay attention to details. That said, I encountered an odd situation today. Last night I submitted a new book to Amazon KDP for both print and Kindle editions. KDP will acept .DOCX files for book interiors, but then you rely on their conversion for the final format. I prefer to submit a PDF that I have created, checked, and (if necessary) fine tuned. That's what I did last night, and it sailed right through KDP's quality check. This afternoon I submitted the same PDF file to Barnes and Noble Press -- and it was rejected. The reason given was that the fonts weren't embedded. The PDF was created from Word, using the built-in "Export to PDF" function. My solution was to go back to what I have done for previous books, and make a new PDF from the Word file by "printing" to a virtual printer: doPDF. That embeds fonts by default. The new PDF was accepted by B&N, and the book should be up for sale in a couple of days. There is apparently a way to make the Word export function embed files, but I don't know how to test it, and it appears that it doesn't save that setting as default. That means you have to remember to turn it on each time -- and the setting is not all that easy to find. I think I'm going to simply eschew Word's export function and always use my trusted virtual printer.
Sapere, your posts are always nice to see - I found this that might address the problem you found. From a Microsoft support forum: Embed fonts in Word or PowerPoint Click the File tab and then click Options (it's near the bottom left corner of the window). In the left column, select the Save tab. At the bottom, under Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation, select the Embed fonts in the file check box. Selecting Embed only the characters used in the presentation reduces the file size but limits editing of the file using the same font. Leaving that check box blank increases the file size, but is best for allowing others to edit the document and keep the same font. We recommend leaving the check box blank if the other person may edit the file. Click OK.
It always reminds me of my grandfather. He was an engineer by trade, but spent a small period in the late 1980s as a Spectrum ZX 128k. It was a good time, but redundancy followed with the console boom of the early 90s. Happy days, though. Happy days.
Thanks, but that applies to embedding fonts in the Word file. My problem was that fonts were not embedded in the PDF file created by Word's Export to PDF feature. I did finally figure out how to do it, though, if anyone else has a need to generate PDFs that will display properly on any computer (regardless of what fonts are on that system): When you click on Export to PDF, a fairly typical dialogue "Save As" box will open, in which you can change the default name of the PDF file and the default location where it will be saved (the default is the same directory/folder that the Word file is in). Near the bottom right of that dialogue box is a button for Options. Clicking the Options button opens a pop-up menu, near the bottom of which is an option for PDF/A. The 'A' is for "Archival," and enabling PDF/A embeds the fonts so that the document will always display properly on any computer. Once you enable PDF/A, it apparently is persistent -- it will remain enabled for new files, unless/until you turn it off.
Ah, I see - I wanted to help, but I'm not a Word user. Somehow, I thought the upper left peak on the Dunning-Krueger chart would be a nice place for me to hang out.
Oh, dear lord. I've been using Word for decades, yet feel like I'm reading Sanskrit whenever I attempt to climb the formatting learning curve.
