Word Hangs Printing to PDF with Embedded Fonts? Fix It Here

The 30-Second Fix – Turn Off Font Embedding

What's actually happening here is Word's PDF engine tries to subset and embed every font used in the document. If one of those fonts has a broken or corrupted glyph table, the process stalls. The fastest way to confirm this is to disable embedding entirely.

1. In Word, go to File > Options > Save.
2. At the bottom, under Preserve fidelity when sharing this document, uncheck Embed fonts in the file.
3. Click OK, then try printing to PDF again.

If that works, you've isolated the problem to font embedding. The document will still print to PDF, but the PDF won't carry the fonts. That's fine for internal use, but if you're sending it to a print shop, you'll need the advanced fix below to actually keep embedding working.

Why does this work? When embedding is off, Word uses the system's standard PDF rendering path, which doesn't touch the font's internal embedding bits. It's a completely different code path, and it's far more forgiving.

The 5-Minute Fix – Clear the Font Cache

If disabling embedding didn't help, or you need embedding on, the next suspect is the Windows font cache. Word reads font metrics from a cached database. If that database is stale or corrupted, any font operation—including PDF export—can hang indefinitely.

Here's the fix, and it's safe:

1. Press Win + R, type services.msc, and hit Enter.
2. Find Windows Font Cache Service. Right-click it and choose Stop.
3. Open File Explorer and go to C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local. Delete the file named FontCache.dat. If it's not there, look in C:\Windows\System32 for FNTCACHE.DAT.
4. Restart the service (or just reboot). Word will rebuild the cache from scratch.

The reason step 3 works is that the cache file is just a performance optimization. Deleting it forces Windows to scan all installed fonts fresh. If a font was half-registered during a failed install, it'll get properly indexed now. I've seen this fix resolve hangs on Windows 10 and 11 with Office 2019 and 365, specifically when the hang happens with documents using Calibri or Arial—those are the fonts most likely to have stale cache entries.

After the reboot, test the print. If it still hangs, move to the advanced fix.

The 15+ Minute Fix – Repair Office and Isolate the Problem Font

If both quick fixes failed, you're dealing with a corrupt Office installation or a specific broken font file. Let's rule out Office first, because that's a 10-minute fix and it's non-destructive.

Step 1: Quick Repair (takes about 5 minutes)

1. Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps (or Apps & features on older Windows).
2. Find Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Office, click the three dots, and choose Modify.
3. Select Quick Repair and let it run.

Quick repair re-registers all Office components without touching your documents or settings. It's worth doing because Office updates sometimes leave the PDF engine in a half-broken state, and this resets it.

Step 2: Find the Offending Font

If the repair doesn't help, the problem is likely a single font file. Here's how to pinpoint it without pulling your hair out:

1. Open the document that hangs. Select all text (Ctrl+A).
2. In the Font dialog (Ctrl+D), note the font name. Usually it's one font causing the issue.
3. Now open Control Panel > Fonts. Find that font. Right-click it and choose Delete. (Don't worry, you can reinstall it later.)
4. Try printing to PDF again. If it works, you've found the culprit. Reinstall the font from a fresh download, or just don't use it.

This is brute force, but it's the only reliable way to find a corrupt font. The hang happens because Word reads the font's OS/2 table to get metrics for the PDF. If that table is malformed, the read operation never returns.

Step 3: Register the Font Properly (if you need it)

If you deleted the font and you need it back, don't just copy the file into C:\Windows\Fonts. That's how you got the corrupt entry in the first place. Instead, right-click the file and choose Install for the current user, then check if the hang recurs. Installing per-user puts the font in a different registry path, which often bypasses the corrupted system-level entry.

A real-world trigger: I've seen this exact hang with the font "Helvetica Neue" downloaded from a random font site. The file was 0 bytes for one of its sub-glyphs. Word would freeze for 10+ seconds on every PDF export, then finally throw "Not Responding." Disabling embedding fixed it instantly, but clearing the cache didn't. The font was the root cause.

What If None of This Works?

Then the issue isn't fonts at all. You might have a printer driver conflict. Since Word's PDF export uses a virtual printer (Microsoft Print to PDF), a broken printer driver can intercept it. Try this as a last-ditch test:

1. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. Add a new printer, choose Microsoft Print to PDF manually (if it's not already listed).
3. Set that as the default and print again.

If that works, your old default printer's driver was the problem. Update or reinstall that driver.

But honestly, 9 times out of 10, the font embedding toggle is the fix. Start there, and you'll be done in under a minute.