Fonts shown as installed by Font Book not available to applications

HI John,

Try deleting the FontBook pref file: com.apple.fontbook.plist
/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag the .plist file from your Preferences folder to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot. Launch Word or QE and see if those fonts are available now.

Validating fonts
If fonts are not displayed as expected when you open documents or you cannot open documents, it's possible fonts have been corrupted. You can validate fonts to confirm they are still safe to use, and remove any corrupted fonts you find.

Take care not to remove system fonts, located in /System/Library/Fonts; removing system fonts could cause some applications to quit unexpectedly.

To validate fonts:
Open Font Book and select one or more installed fonts to check.
Choose File > Validate Font.
In the Font Validation window, review the fonts listed for warnings or errors. Use the pop-up menu to display warnings and errors separately, if necessary.
For fonts with warnings or errors, click the disclosure triangle next to the font to see which validation rules show errors.
To remove a corrupted font, click the checkbox next to the font. Make sure fonts you want to keep are not checked. Then click the Remove Checked button.
You can also use the Console utility to troubleshoot problems with installed fonts. In the console.log window, type "font" or a font name (such as "Arial") in the Filter field to find font-related log messages.

You can validate font files before installing the fonts. To do so, in Font Book choose File > Validate Files. Browse to and select a font file to validate and click Open. Font Book displays the Font Validation window and indicates whether it found problems with the font.

Carolyn 🙂

HI John,

Are you running Classic???

Go here and scroll all the way to bottom of the page where it says: Reinstalling your fonts.
http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

Carolyn 🙂

Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Ok.. process of elimination... check out the link above for reinstalling because it sounds like your Arial fonts are corrupted.


Carolyn 🙂

Hi John,

Try deleting the associated preference file for QE and Word.
Look something like this; com.quarkexpress.plist and com.word.plist I don't know the exact what those preference files read... but you can find them here:

/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag those files from the preferences folder to the trash, empty the Trash and reboot.

Launch QE or Word and see if you can use the Arial fonts.

Carolyn 🙂

I don't use Word... sorry. And yes, I do have those fonts installed.

Carolyn 🙂

I don't use Quark either John. I have an idea though. You've got a file somewhere created with either Word or QE that has a problem font in it... try deleting this file:

com.apple.RecentItems.plist /Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag that file from the Preferences folder to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot.

Launch Word and see if you can access the Arial fonts....

Carolyn 🙂

Go to Versiontracker or Macupdate & install Fontnuke. Use this utility to clear out your font caches.

Delete duplicate fonts. To do this - Applications/Font Book
Select “All Fonts”
If you see any “black dots” next to any fonts this mean you have duplicates and/or multiple versions of these fonts.

To clean this up, select a “black dotted” font or the Apple + click to select multiple dotted fonts;
Edit/Resolve/Duplicates.
What the above does is turns off the duplicates & multiple version fonts. Not delete them.

HI CMCSK,

Aren't you a lifesaver! Caches... of course! I will copy/paste the information for future use.


Thanks!
Carolyn 🙂

Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit