Characters not appearing correctly in PDF files

AUTHOR: Stephania Tapela

DATE POSTED: April 26, 2017

PROBLEM
Characters not appearing correctly in PDF files.

DESCRIPTION
Strange symbols and squares appearing at the place of text in a PDF produced by Telerik Reporting.
Possible causes are

• The used font is not TrueType;
• The used font does not support the characters you need to display;
• The used font is not available on the server and/or the client machines.

SOLUTION

Telerik Reporting rendering mechanisms use native objects for the selected media. 

In order to produce a PDF that visualizes content correctly via Telerik Reporting, the report must be designed with TrueType font that is available on the machine where reports are processed and rendered. Reports are processed and rendered server-side.

If the text contains special characters like custom glyphs, icons, you need to check if the font supports them. You may need to switch to a font with Uncode characters support e.g. Arial Unicode MS.

If the font cannot be installed on the server machine, where reports are processed and rendered, you can use Telerik Reporting privateFonts settings. The settings are applicable only through the configuration file of the application. You will need to declare a Telerik.Reporting section first.

If the font is not available on the client machine, you can fully embed the fonts in the PDF file during its generation. You will need to declare a Telerik.Reporting section first.Then you need to configure the PDF extension and its FontEmbedding parameter:

The settings can be done in code if you export programmatically - Set rendering parameters programmatically.