# Greek letters do not export correctly

Here is a simple plot

P0 = Plot[x, {x, -7, 7}, Frame -> True, FrameLabel -> {"Ω", "Y"}]


Then I want to export as .pdf it using

E0 = Export["test.pdf", P0, "PDF"];


but the Greek capital letter Omega does export correctly and at its place I get an empty little square. If I export it as an .eps I get nothing, not even the little square. Only when I export it as .jpg everything is OK. I'm using MMA v 9.0 in Win XP SP3 but this is irrelevant because I tried it in different versions and OSs and the problem remains.

Any ideas?

• it works for me on MM 10.0.1 MacOS. Nov 28, 2014 at 8:40
• It works for me on windows 7, version 10.01. Time to upgrade. You do not need to write "PDF" in there. File name extension is "pdf" already. Also, try the greek letters without "" around them. It should work. It works for me. Do not make them strings. Nov 28, 2014 at 8:40
• It works under Win7 x64 in versions 8.0.4 and 10.0.1. It works both for the Greek letters being Strings and Symbols. Nov 28, 2014 at 13:23

    p1 = Plot[x, {x, -7, 7}
, Frame -> True
, FrameLabel -> {Ω, Υ}
, LabelStyle -> {FontFamily -> "Times", 14, GrayLevel[0]}
, ImageMargins -> 5]


You can use, i.e. specify FontFamily for your choice of font, if the font is installed on your system the font will be embedded. The most standard fonts are correctly embedded. One advantage is to use fonts that have a matured character level of mathematic characters.

Use the palette Writing Assistant or Special Characters, so that the right fonts will be used in the frontend.

For export:

exp1 = Export["test.pdf", p1]


On 10.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (September 10, 2014) the resulting PDF ist about 15KB an the fonts are embedded: