| CID Tag | Most Likely Actual Font (Adobe Collection) | Typical Use Case | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Heisei Kaku Gothic Gothic W5 / Adobe Ming Std L | Bold sans-serif or serif body text | | F2 | Heisei Mincho W3 / Ryumin Light-KL | Serif body text (newspapers, books) | | F3 | Kozuka Gothic Pro B / Kaku Gothic B | Bold headings | | F4 | Kozuka Mincho Pro R | Elegant serif for subtitles | | F5 | Ryumin Light-KL / Adobe Heisei Std | Traditional book printing | | F6 | Girouard Gothic / Midashi GB | Display headlines | | F7 | Variant of F1 or F2 (often bold italic) | Emphasis or sidebars |
If you are trying to open a file and see these errors, the PDF was likely exported incorrectly. Google Groups Export as New PDF : Open the file in a browser or "Preview" (on Mac) and use Export as PDF Print to PDF
Since you cannot download "CIDFont F1," you must identify the original font it represents: Check Document Properties : Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader (Windows) or (Mac), and click the | CID Tag | Most Likely Actual Font
These are or font aliases used in some PostScript printers (especially older models from Apple, HP, or Adobe‑licensed engines) and in certain PDF documents that rely on printer‑resident fonts rather than embedded subsets.
stands for Character Identifier . Developed by Adobe Systems, CID-keyed fonts are a specialized type of digital font format designed to handle languages with massive character sets, particularly East Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK). The Technical Challenge Developed by Adobe Systems, CID-keyed fonts are a
: Frequently represent Times New Roman (Regular, Italic, or Bold).
If you just need high-quality, free fonts for your project, skip the CID placeholders and use these reputable libraries: If you are seeing errors for or F2
With the widespread adoption of the OpenType format, Adobe and other foundries have stopped supporting the direct use of CID-keyed fonts in modern operating systems and applications.
If you are seeing errors for or F2 , here is everything you need to know about what they are and how to fix the missing font issue. What are CID Fonts (F1, F2, F3...)?
If you are a designer or developer who genuinely needs to work with CID-keyed fonts, specialized tools are required:
When a program like Adobe Illustrator cannot find the original font name in a PDF, it assigns generic labels like F1, F2, F3 , etc..