Tutorial Description
This tutorial shows how to transform text within a PDF to outlines. Usually you wouldn't want to do this, as once text has been changed to outlines it is no longer searchable. Also, creating outlines of text will increase the filesize of the PDF. So why would you want to change text to outlines? Usually you would only need to do this when you are sending the PDF to someone else, such as a printing service, and they cannot work with the fonts contained within your PDF. Perhaps you have composite fonts embeded in your PDF, and your printing company cannot accept composite fonts. This tutorial assumes you do not have access to the source file that the PDF was created from. If you do, you should changes the fonts in that file. But, if you don't, here is how you can create outlines using Acrobat.
Add a transparent watermark
The first step is to add a transparent watermark to all pages that contain a font that you need to transform to outlines. Do this by clicking Document → Watermark → Add. For the source of the watermark, select “text” and type anthing into the text field. Move the slider for opacity down to 0%. This will make sure the watermark isn't visable. Click on “Page Range Options” to select which pages will have a watermark added. Only the pages with a transparent object on it will have its text changed to outlines.
I wrote a script that can speed up adding transparent watermarks to pages, when you only want to apply the watermark to specific pages within a PDF. The script is ran as a batch process, entering the page number of each page you want to add a transparent object to seperated with commas into a dialog box. That script can be downloaded here: add_Transparency script.
Flattening the pages
Next you need to flatten the pages. The flattener will take all pages with a transparent object on it and flatten them. When it does this you have the options to convert all the text on those pages to outlines. To do this click on Advanced → Print Production → Flattener Preview.
On the flattener preview window check off “Convert All Text to Outlines” and apply it to all pages in the document. The flattener will run and once it's finished all of those pages that you added a transparent watermark to will have have all the fonts on it transformed to outlines.
