Import PDF to Publisher with text intact

[Henry_Glen]

I tried several times to import my PDF file to Publisher. The problem that I get is there will be new text that groups in small layers. There is a warning of a missing font in the first window when I try to open the PDF file, but when I check to replace the font, it doesn't do anything, and the PDF font is still the same, and there is still a new group font. Can someone help me with this?

[Hangman]

Hi @Henry_Glen and welcome to the forums,

Which is the missing font that's reported when you try to open your PDF file?

Are you opening the pdf file to make changes to it or do you just want the pdf to appear on one page of a larger document without any changes required to the pdf itself?

[Henry_Glen]

Hi @Hangman,

Thank you so much for responding to my topic.

I don't know which font is missing, because it said only "Type3+〇〇" and it's a lot. The thing is, I created this PDF in Figma on my computer, so the font should be in the system, right? 

I not planning to change the document, I only want to add a hyperlink on each page.  

[Hangman]

Hi @Henry_Glen,

Are you happy to upload the pdf so we can take a quick look at what is causing the text issue?

If you have no need to edit the pdf itself you could use Fle > Place instead of opening the pdf which would maintain the integrity of the original file without the text issue and then you could potentially add a hyperlink on top of the placed pdf unless you need to attach the hyperlink to some existing text in the pdf itself...

What will the hyperlink actually link to, another page in the document a website?

[Henry_Glen]

Hi @Hangman,

I attached one page of my PDF file here, please take a look.

If I use the Place option, do I need to do it one by one for each page? Because I have like 100 pages, I think it's not efficient to do that.

22.pdf

[Hangman]

Hi @Henry_Glen,

The issue with the PDF is that the original font used wasn't embedded when the file was exported to PDF.

What you have in the PDF when Opening rather than Placing is the 80's style computer game text as curves, i.e., non-editable text and then sitting on top of it heavily tracked actual text but the font which Acrobat reports as Type 3_DSAW or T3 Font_0.

As far as I can tell it's not possible to embed fonts when exporting to pdf from Figma...

However, Placing the PDF works without issue ...

54 minutes ago, Henry_Glen said:

If I use the Place option, do I need to do it one by one for each page? Because I have like 100 pages, I think it's not efficient to do that.

You can place as many pages at once as you like by using the Pages panel in Publisher assuming all the pages are in the same pdf file... If they're not you could easily combine them all first into a single PDF file and then use the Place panel to add the pages as required...

[Henry_Glen]

Hi @Hangman,

Thank you so much for your quick response and the video tutorial.

The font that I use is my original font, it is called 'My personal pixel font' not Type 3_DSAW or T3 Font_0 font. Actually, I'm new with Figma too, so I didn't know that it's not possible to embed fonts when exporting to a PDF file. Thank you so much for telling me this.

I think I will just use the Place option as you have shown in the video.

Once again thank you so much and have a great day!

[Hangman]

Hi @Henry_Glen,

That's no problem at all, your file works fine when placed so that should work... If all your PDF pages are in a single PDF document then you can use the technique shown in the screen recording above. If they're not all in a single PDF you can easily combine them before Placing them in your Publisher document and add your hyperlinks on top of the Placed PDF...

[Henry_Glen]

I will try that method, thank you so much!

[David in Яuislip]

If you place the file into Publisher you can add a hyperlink but only one per page and it applies to the whole page. If that's acceptable then fair enough, read no further
An alternative approach is to replace the text with paths then you can open the file in Publisher and add hyperlinks where you like. Obviously the searchable text has gone but you should be able to process the document in one go rather than page by page
The attached file has a hyperlink at "This year I will" which links by URL to google.com done by Publisher
22.pdf was renamed Fonts22.pdf as I have a pathological problem with files starting with a digit
I used Ghostscript
gswin64 -dNoOutputFonts -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o Font22paths.pdf Font22.pdf
to convert the text to paths

Font22pathsHLink.pdf

[Henry_Glen]

Hi @David in Яuislip,

Thank you so much for the alternative method.

For now, I'd like to keep the text searchable, so I think I'll stick with the Place method.

[kenmcd]

3 hours ago, Henry_Glen said:

The font that I use is my original font, it is called 'My personal pixel font' not Type 3_DSAW or T3 Font_0 font.

The font can probably be fixed so it embeds properly.
Looks like this was created by one of those online make-your-own-font sites.
Is that correct?

Regardless, it can probably be fixed in a few minutes.
Attach the font here if you would like me to take a look, and fix it.

 

[Hangman]

Hi @David in Яuislip,

3 hours ago, David in Яuislip said:

2 hours ago, kenmcd said:

Attach the font here if you would like me to take a look, and fix it

If you place the file into Publisher you can add a hyperlink but only one per page and it applies to the whole page.

If Placing rather than Opening the original PDF, you can add as many hyperlinks as you want per page... Sample attached (considerately named owing to your pathological problem with files starting with a digit) with the original 22.pdf file placed into a Publisher page, hyperlinks added to 'This year I will', 'I'm going to' and the 'My resolution this year' text objects then exported to a new pdf file...

Page_22.pdf
 

3 hours ago, David in Яuislip said:

An alternative approach is to replace the text with paths then you can open the file in Publisher and add hyperlinks where you like.

The My Personal Pixel Font text is already converted to curves in the original PDF file so I'm unsure what this achieves... You could just as easily open the original 22.pdf in Publisher as is, select text objects (i.e., existing curves layers) and add hyperlinks accordingly...
 

3 hours ago, David in Яuislip said:

Obviously the searchable text has gone

The issue when Opening the PDF is that the invisible searchable text becomes visible and apart from appearing heavily negatively tracked it also loses the spacing between words which means individual words are not searchable if re-exported directly to a new PDF file...
 

3 hours ago, Henry_Glen said:

For now, I'd like to keep the text searchable, so I think I'll stick with the Place method.

The original 22.pdf, while searchable isn't particularly specific with its search targeting, i.e., not exactly word specific...
 

If there is a requirement to maintain specific text search functionality along with adding hyperlinks you could open the original 22.pdf in Publisher, correct the tracking and add spaces to the invisible editable text layers then where you have a visibly matching text layer either leave, as is as an overlapping layer or where not matching (i.e., bold text, a non-selectable option for the font in Publisher) set the editable text layers' visibility to something like 0.1% opacity so the editable text layers appear invisible (yet are still searchable) in the exported PDF or just apply 0.1% opacity to all the searchable text before exporting..

 

[kenmcd]

29 minutes ago, Hangman said:

In true Blue Peter style (for anyone who gets the cultural reference) here's one I purchased earlier...

@Hangman I do not see anything (obvious) wrong with that font.
Have you had any issues embedding it in a PDF with Affinity?

[Hangman]

5 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

Have you had any issues embedding it in a PDF with Affinity?

None at all, the issue appears to be with how Publisher interprets the invisible text layer (unsure if that is the correct way to describe it, the invisible text layer feels more like an OCR layer in this case exported from Figma where you can't seemingly embed fonts on export to pdf) when the original 22.pdf file is opened in Publisher...

I see this a lot when opening certain pdf files in Publisher (Affinity apps), i.e., the font used has massive negative tracking and lacks spaces between words... I've never really understood why Affinity apps interpret the text that way...

Hoping you can enlighten us...

[kenmcd]

4 minutes ago, Hangman said:

None at all, the issue appears to be with how Publisher interprets the invisible text layer (unsure if that is the correct way to describe it, the invisible text layer feels more like an OCR layer in this case exported from Figma where you can't seemingly embed fonts on export to pdf) when the original 22.pdf file is opened in Publisher...

Ahh... I was not following the whole conversation.
That would explain the odd behavior when that PDF was opened in multiple PDF editors.
I was just looking at the fonts listed (or not listed).
Actually it looks like no fonts are embedded at all.
So maybe the original font has nothing to do with this.
Appears Figma just creates bad PDFs.

[Hangman]

57 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

Appears Figma just creates bad PDFs.

Bizarrely it appears Figma’s incredibly basic PDF export functionality actually excludes an option to embed fonts, subsequently my assumption (rightly or wrongly) is that a Figma exported PDF convert’s all text to outlines though I’m slightly confused by the seemingly invisible text layer non visible when placing the PDF in Publisher yet visible when Opening the PDF…

Viewing the PDF in Acrobat Reader suggests the font is not embedded but equally shows it as T3_Font 0…

[Henry_Glen]

Hi @kenmcd and @Hangman,

I wanted to take a moment to thank you both for your incredible support. I’ve already tried the placing method and exported the file as a PDF—it turned out great, and I’m really pleased with the results! (Although I couldn’t pinpoint the specific words using search, it’s all good.) I understand that Figma might be converting all the text to outlines, and while starting over isn’t really an option at this stage.

@Hangman, I’m especially grateful that you went the extra mile to purchase my font. That truly made my day! I just have one small favor to ask—could you please keep the font private and not share it publicly?

Thanks again for everything. I couldn’t have done it without your guys' help!

[Hangman]

6 minutes ago, Henry_Glen said:

I’m especially grateful that you went the extra mile to purchase my font. That truly made my day! I just have one small favor to ask—could you please keep the font private and not share it publicly?

Absolutely, apologies, I hadn’t realised it was actually your own font… I’ve now removed it from my previous post…

[Henry_Glen]

Hi @Hangman,

Thank you so much for your understanding—I really appreciate it!

I wanted to share that I found a more efficient method that works well for me. I’ve been importing the .fig file into Sketch, and from there, I can easily export it as a PDF. Then, I just open the PDF in Publisher to add the hyperlinks. This way, my PDF remains searchable and fully hyperlinked.

[Hangman]

Hi @Henry_Glen,

Thanks for the update... I'm glad you have a workable solution now...