Oops, so it's the problem that Word cann't embed CFF flavored OpenType. Sad to learn it :(

Did I discover a workaround? In Word 2010, after you select save as PDF, click the Options button and uncheck the option "Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded" (below, it is still checked)

Here's how the text looks in Word 2010:

Here's a save as PDF using the default options. Word tries to convert the fonts to bitmap and it gets garbled.

Here's a save as PDF using the new options:

I know this may be a foolish question, but just to be sure: did you open this PDF in a computer without Minion and Alix installed?

See for yourself. I posted the two PDFs that were the source of the screenshots above.

http://typographyforlawyers.com/pdf/pdftest-1.pdf
http://typographyforlawyers.com/pdf/pdftest-2.pdf

Not working.

PDFTest-1 shows rasterized type:

PDFTest-2 does not embed the fonts:

butterick, I am seeing an apples to oranges comparison. Reading this thread, the issue is: can OpenType Postscript flavor (CFF) fonts be made into a PDF, in Word 2010, without rasterization? The rasterization causes some quality problems.

It seems that you are answering a different question: can non-embeddible fonts be used (rasterized) to make a PDF? The result (yes) is interesting, but not really the original question.

Also, I'm interested to know if Microsoft Word Service Pack 1 changed anything with regard to the original question, if anyone knows.

I am pretty sure this limitation was not addressed in SP1.

Not working.

Aha. Then the answer to my question is no, I did not discover a workaround. Thanks for testing it.

Sii Daniels, thanks for the info. I'll keep a good thought for future versions.

I think at long last I've come across a fix to this situation. It involves (thankfully) only Word itself and Acrobat...

Check out this link: http://wordtopdfimage.blogspot.com/2012/02/preserve-image-quality-when-saving-from.html

Includes comparative screenshots which was cool...