Font not exporting bold

Question

I have encountered a rather strange problem. I recently migrated to a new workstation with Windows 7 (formerly using XP). Ever since, I have noticed that there is one particular font that I use often with my maps that refuses to export bold to pdf. When I look at the pdf or print a map with this font set to bold in ArcMap, it always prints or exports without bold. I tried with other fonts to try to narrow down the problem, including fonts I had to move over from my old workstation, and every other font I tried exported properly. The font in question will export as underline, italic, and strikethrough, but not bold. I also tried using this font in Microsoft Word and exporting to pdf, and that worked fine, so this must be an ArcMap problem. I never had any issues like this until I switched to my new workstation with Windows 7. Any ideas what's going on?

One other thing: I even tried changing some of the map annotation to this font and bold, that didn't work either. I typically only use this font for map surround text, but I thought I'd try it anyway to see if it made a difference.

TimGIS42 · Answer

Hi Matt,

I'm a bit late to the party but I have the exact same problem with certain fonts loosing their "boldness" when exporting to PDF but not when exporting to TIF.

Did you find a solution for this issue?
I'm using ArcMap 10.5.1.

NidhinKarthikeyan · Answer

Make sure you had checked 'Compress Vector Graphics' and increase the Resolution to 200 or 300 dpi.

MattBull · Answer

I think I may have narrowed the problem down a bit further. I tried exporting one of the maps with the font in question as a .tif and as a .jpg, and both times it was properly exported with bold font, so my guess is it has something to do with the print settings in ArcMap.