Fonts change after reopening Illustrator file, causing layout issues
I created a mailer in Illustrator with around 10–12 artboards and exported everything perfectly with the correct fonts. When I reopened the same file after two days to make changes, all the fonts had changed automatically, some text had disappeared, and the layout no longer matched my earlier exported JPGs. The fonts were installed and displaying correctly at the time of the first export, so the issue only appeared after reopening the saved file. I’ve attached the before/after GIF to show the difference.
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STD-3119-7A%20PartPreview%20CORRECT.pdf 704 KB -
STD-3119-7A%20PartPreview%20CORRUPT.pdf 319 KB -
Screenshot%202025-07-16%20at%203.30.09%E2%80%AFPM.png 85 KB -
Screenshot%202025-09-02%20at%2010.00.12%E2%80%AFAM.png 1142 KB -
Screenshot%202025-09-02%20at%2010.00.24%E2%80%AFAM.png 413 KB -
Layer%201.jpg 490 KB -
Layer%202.jpg 519 KB -
Screenshot-(79).gif 2539 KB
Raviraj Prajapati
shared this idea
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Jack Williams commented
Not sure if this is related to saving Illustrator files as PDFs, but on more than one occasion Illustrator has 'corrupted' my work file by switching all of the fonts in the document around. It's very strange, and I only find out once I open the file again after saving & closing. Not only does Illustrator takes existing fonts on the document and switch them around with others, but it also changes some of them to fonts that weren't on the document at all. It's very unpredictable. I am uploading the proper version and the broken version (I work with Braille fonts, if you're wondering what the dots are).
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Jordan Quinones Walker commented
When reopening files no prompt appears for replacing missing fonts and when checking the find/replace missing fonts - it says everything is in order. But every font is replaced. And if everything was one font, it gets jumbled into 3 or 4 different fonts, so you can't even find replace back to original. Happening across multiple files, fonts and computers for multiple coworkers.
The attached images show the .ai file on the left with the incorrect fonts (not the original fonts or formats it was saved with)and the right is the pdf reflecting the original design.
The additional image shows a file that originally had all the text as one font and upon opening looked like multiple fonts together, but the file never registered missing fonts.
(white box with black strokes to cover redacted information)
****Update: This was submitted as my own bug post and was combined with this so all my images are grouped with the images up top
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Raviraj Prajapati
commented
@Egor Chistyakov
These are a mix of Area and Point Type texts. Enlarging the area doesn’t fix it because the issue isn’t overset — the fonts themselves have changed. In some cases the font name or even the font family is different after reopening, while other fonts remain correct.
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岩本
commented
1. OS：macOS Sonoma 14.5 イラストレーター：バージョン 29.7.1
2. データの保存時またはデータを開いた時
3. 編集時と同様のフォントでの表示
4. 一部又は全部のフォントが編集時とは全く異なるフォントに変更されている。 -
Raviraj, are these area type texts?
If yes, please check if the fonts used become placed as expected when you make the areas larger? If it helps, confirm if the problem appears only when the text in area gets overset (overflown).
If it does — the recent Beta build had this problem fixed. If possible, try to install it and comment back to confirm or deny the fix.
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