Mind your fonts when emailing presentations

I once received a sponsorship proposal from a rock event organiser. The presentation came to me by email. While going through the slides I saw this:

(Slide # 1)

Don't think I have cropped the picture, this is the complete slide as seen in slideshow. One more slide from the same presentation:

(Slide # 2)

As you can see, the characters are getting cut. The first impression you get is that the sender has not even taken care to see the slides in the slideshow (and asks for sponsorship money, beat that!) Has the sender really been careless? Or can this happen for any other reason that the sender is not even aware of?

Absolutely. Assuming the sender has taken due care, this problem can occur when the presentation is sent by mail and the receiving computer does not have the 'special' font which the sender has used. In this case, my laptop did not have the 'whatever' font which the sender had used in these slide to impress me.

The moral of the story is either

1. Use standard fonts that would be available in most computers like Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma

or,

2. Embed the fonts into your presentation: Go to Powerpoint Options in PowerPoint 2007 (or Tools > Options in 2003). Under the 'Save' Tab, check 'Embed TrueType fonts' before saving and emailing the presentation.


What are the problems have YOU faced when emailing presentations?

Related post:
How to make effective sponsorship proposals