Type 1C (CID) Fonts are Garbled in PDF Macro
Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles for non-Data Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Problem
When using PDF macro to embed a PDF document to Confluence page, multi-byte characters (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc) would not be rendered correctly (garbled).
For better context, you may refer to this bug report - CONFSERVER-37252 - CID fonts are garbled in PDF Macros.
Diagnosis
Identify what's the font types of fonts embedded in your PDF file. You may do so by following the steps outlined in this superuser post.
Cause
The type of the fonts embedded in the PDF file itself is not supported by Confluence.
As mentioned in this documentation, only true type fonts and true type collections font types are supported in Confluence. Other font types, e.g. Type 1C (CID) would not be rendered as per expected.
Workaround
To convert your PDF file to either true type fonts and true type collections font types and reattach it to your Confluence page.