MicroStrategy ONE

Embedding fonts in PDFs

Embedding fonts ensures that the original fonts selected in the Document Editor are used to display and print the PDF, even on machines that do not have the original fonts installed. No font substitutions are made.

Embedding fonts allows you to:

  • Use language fonts other than Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Western European in PDFs

  • Provide a true Unicode environment, where one document contains different languages

    Font embedding is not required if the only languages used are Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, and the matching language fonts are used instead of a Unicode font.

  • Create PDFs containing Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters for any machine, even one without the corresponding Acrobat Reader language pack

    Acrobat Reader cannot display bookmarks in the correct language font unless the corresponding language pack is installed on the user's machine. The remainder of the PDF will display and print the languages correctly. This Acrobat Reader requirement applies to all languages other than English and Western European.

  • Create truly portable PDFs to email and to publish on the web, even if you do not have control over the machines that will display and print the PDFs

    For a MicroStrategy Web user to view the embedded fonts, the fonts must be installed on the Intelligence Server machine.

  • Bullets, thresholds, and any other objects that require special fonts are displayed correctly if the PDF is displayed on a Kindle or Nook. For more best practices on designing documents for the Kindle or Nook, see Best practices: Designing documents for Kindle and Nook.

Considerations before you embed fonts include:

  • Embedded fonts may create a larger PDF, because the file now includes extra font data and encoding tables. Additionally, single-byte languages use two bytes.

  • Embedded fonts require a longer generation time for the PDF, since the file is larger and extra processing is needed to embed the fonts.

  • Embedded fonts create a larger memory footprint due to the number of fonts, the number of embedded characters, and the size of the PDF output.

The Embed fonts in PDF setting in the steps below ensures that if the fonts used in the document are available on the machine that generates the PDF, the fonts are embedded in the PDF. When you execute a document in MicroStrategy Developer, the PDF is generated by that client machine. When you execute a document in MicroStrategy Web, the PDF is generated by the Intelligence Server machine.

If you edit a document containing embedded fonts on a machine that does not have those fonts installed, a Windows default font is displayed instead. For example, this scenario can occur when you create a document and embed fonts for Japanese. In this case, the Japanese fonts are installed on that machine and the Intelligence Server used for the project. Another user views the document on a different machine that does not have Japanese fonts. The document displays correctly because you embedded the fonts. If that user edits the document, the Japanese characters are displayed in the font that Windows selects as the closest match to the missing font. If this occurs, do not change the font selections, which are set to blank automatically, so that they will continue to display correctly in the PDF.

The solution is to install the font on any machine that is used to edit the document.

This procedure affects the entire document, including all layouts of a multi-layout document. For more information on multi-layout documents, see Creating multi-layout documents.

To embed fonts in a PDF

  1. In MicroStrategy Web, open the document in Design or Editable Mode.

  2. From the Tools menu, select Document Properties. The Properties dialog box opens.

  3. On the left, select Export.

  4. In the PDF area, select the Embed fonts in PDF check box.

  5. Click OK to return to the document.