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Apologies if this isn't the right forum for this, but I couldn't really find a better fit.

In the last couple of weeks, when I export slides from PowerPoint (on MacOS Sonoma 14.6,1) to a PDF, the font does not export correctly (defaulting back to Calibri) despite being set to be embedded into the slides/file in Preferences and not being license-restricted (it is "Jost").

At the same time, upon exporting I am finding some elements of the document that have transparency are not rendering correctly and appear grey.

I should stress that this has been working absolutely fine for several years and so I know it isn't a fundamental issue/limitation. It is also worth mentioning that I have previously encountered this issue and fixed it before, but unfortunately I don't recall exactly what it took, and googling the issues keeps leading me down blind alleys which aren't useful.

My best guess is that a recent update has broken something, but does anyone have any more specific guidance about how to fix this?

Joe Healey
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4 Answers4

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I noticed the same change in the past couple of weeks and wondered if there was some sort of glitch in the most recent updates. I'm not even going to pretend that I know much about this. I asked my husband and he said to try print to PDF, also, but I don't even see that option...so I went to Google and found your question.

Someone suggested saving to an older format first but that didn't work for me either. As I was getting ready to export it again, I noticed a toggle button just below the file format box. The options are "best fof electronic distribution" or "best for printing". It is defaulting to electronic distribution. When I selected "best for printing" and then exported, all was well with my PPT to PDFs again.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of us. Hope that is what's happening for you too!

Andrea Champagne
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Here's a few suggestions to try:

  • If the installed font is a family with multiple weights, try replacing the entire font pack with a single weight/face from the font family (Jost Regular instead of just Jost)
  • Save the file in an older PowerPoint format (97-2003 etc.), then try exporting to PDF.
  • Try using Adobe Acrobat to export. See if "Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts" is checked in the Adobe PDF printer properties in the Print menu (Ctrl + P). Uncheck it, then try exporting it via Adobe PDF. ref
  • Save the file (using File > Options > Save) with both "Embed fonts in the file" and "Embed all characters" checked. ref
Blend3rman
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When you say export to pdf do you mean print to pdf, adobe pdf or just outlooks native export to pdf feature?

If you haven't try printing to PDF instead. Alternatively although it's a bit of a pain you could install microsofts .xps/.xpf document printer through add windows components see if it exports correctly to that format and then convert the xps/xpf file to a PDF

Ivy
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So I eventually got an answer to this from Microsoft, albeit a bit unsatisfactory.

During export, you have the choice of exporting as "Best for printing" or "best for electronic distribution".

What is not obvious (though they have added a small note in parentheses), is that each of these uses a different export service, with the "electronic distribution" option sending the file to Microsoft's online webservice. The printing option creates the PDF locally as far as I can determine.

It seems the problem is with the webservice, because switching to export as best for printing resolves the issue completely.

I'm guessing during an update or something my default was changed without me noticing, so I had assumed it was always being done by the webservice (which appears to be the toggle chosen as default).

Joe Healey
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