PDF Font Checker

A PDF that looks right on your screen can still print wrong: if a font is not embedded, the printer or the recipient's viewer substitutes another one, and spacing, line breaks or special characters change. This checker lists every font a PDF uses — on pages, inside reused graphics and in form fields — with its type, encoding, whether it is embedded or subset, and the pages it appears on. It runs in your browser; the PDF is not uploaded.

How to use this tool

1. Choose one or more PDFs.
2. Read the summary: any font marked "Not embedded" is a risk for printing and archiving.
3. Optionally tick "extract" to download the embedded font programs.
4. If something is missing, re-export the PDF from the original app with font embedding turned on.

Formula

The tool walks each page's /Resources /Font dictionary, form XObjects (recursively) and annotation appearance streams. A font counts as embedded when its FontDescriptor has a FontFile (Type 1), FontFile2 (TrueType) or FontFile3 (CFF/OpenType) stream; for Type 0 fonts the descriptor of the descendant CID font is checked. A six-letter prefix such as ABCDEF+ marks a subset.

The "standard font" note covers the 14 base fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol, ZapfDingbats) that readers always have a replacement for; print workflows still want them embedded.

Example

A brochure shows 5 fonts: four embedded as subsets (e.g. NotoSansKR-Bold, stored in the PDF as ABCDEF+NotoSansKR-Bold, CID-keyed TrueType, pages 1–8) and Arial,Bold — TrueType — Not embedded on page 3, where a pasted text box kept a system font. Re-exporting with "embed all fonts" fixes that one entry.