Lucida Grande display problems

Question

Level 1

4 points

Lucida Grande display problems

i just upgraded to leopard on my powerbook g4 aluminum 1.0 GHz. everything is working fine, however, the lucida grande font (which is the main system font) looks a little weird whenever i use any of my microsoft office 2004 applications--it looks very uneven at the 9 and 10 point sizes, and the letter "g" is missing its tail, so it kinda looks like an "o". the font looks fine on my imac, which is also running leopard, so i don't think it's the font file.

it especially looks weird when using entourage--the calendar uses this font, so it is pretty annoying.

i don't want to turn on the text smoothing because it makes certain fonts (e.g. times new roman) look too fuzzy.

this problem only occurs on my powerbook when i use my ms office 2004 applications. when i use mail or textedit, it looks fine, but it also looks like the text smoothing is turned on even though it is turned off for those point sizes. so any help would be appreciated. thanks!

Powerbook G4 Aluminum 1.0 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Oct 21, 2009 9:51 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Oct 22, 2009 8:01 AM in response to chicago bear

If you don't get an answer here, you might try the forums for MS products, though I suspect most people have probably moved to the 2008 version.

http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/

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Answer 2

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Oct 22, 2009 8:54 AM in response to chicago bear

chicago --

Tom's advice is excellent . . .
The only other thing I might suggest is checking
for duplicates in Ludida Grande fonts. Everything except the .dfont.

It could be that you have duplicates in the MS version of that font.

Actually, if you haven't checked for dups, that would be a great idea overall.
Open up Font Book from your Applications folder. Select "All Fonts."
Check for duplicates (tiny dots to the right of the fonts). Do you have
a bunch of dupes, especially In the LG's.

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Answer 3

chicago bear Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 22, 2009 9:10 AM in response to TildeBee

yes, i already did that in font book. the only lucida grande fonts i have are regular and bold.

i did a search of my hard drive, and i only have one copy of lucida grande—it's called "LucidaGrande.dfont" and it's in my harddisk/system/library/fonts folder.

in my ms office 2004/office/fonts folder, i do not have lucida grande there, but i do have lucida blackletter, lucida bright, lucida calligraphy, lucida fax, lucida handwriting, lucida sans, lucida sans typewriter, lucida fax, and lucida handwriting. but i think that's okay because lucida grande is a system font...the other system fonts are not in my ms office fonts folder either.

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Answer 4

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Oct 22, 2009 9:43 AM in response to chicago bear

right.
As long as you only have one of each of those other Lucida fonts,
you should be good to go.

So I guess it's back to Tom's M$ advice.
I thought I'd give it a shot.

EDIT: When you're using Word, you should be using one of the Lucida fonts,
not the LucidaGrande d.font.

Message was edited by: ~Bee

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Answer 5

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,596 points

Oct 22, 2009 11:04 AM in response to chicago bear

Since only Office 2004 is showing the problem, then the problem is likely with its font cache files. Office has its own cache files, which can be deleted any time there are no Office apps running.

Close all Office applications. Remove the following files. The tilde (~) indicates your home account.

~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.browserfont.cache

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)

Launch any Office app to have it rebuild the cache files.

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Answer 6

chicago bear Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 22, 2009 12:26 PM in response to Kurt Lang

thanks for the input. i did exactly as you said and removed those two files, but unfortunately, it still looks the same. not only that, but now verdana 12pt bold looks kinda funny as well. for the lucida grande problem, it's only the 9 pt and 10 pt font that is missing the bottom part of the g.

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Answer 7

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,596 points

Oct 22, 2009 2:34 PM in response to chicago bear

Okay, that proves it's not just an issue with cache files. That it is only Office does indicate something wrong with that suite. Close all Office apps. Go to the Preferences folder in your account and move the folder "Microsoft" to the desktop. Launch Word and test the text in question.

If all is okay, then something was wrong in the preference files. You'll then need to reset anything in each apps prefs that was not the default settings. Otherwise, try the following:

1) If nothing changed, then quit all Office apps and move the "Microsoft" folder back to the Preferences folder so you don't have to reset anything back to your preferred settings.

2) Create a new guest account. Login to that account and see if the same thing happens.

3) If it behaves normally in the test account, then something is wrong in your normal user account. Just not sure what yet.

4) If text is still displaying incorrectly, then either Office is damaged, the OS (or its fonts) are damaged, or both.

If the last is true, then BACK UP all Office data you've created, including the "Main Identity" folder in your user account, which is your Entourage database, if that's what you use for email.

Run the "Remove Office" tool on the Office installation CD to completely remove all traces of Office from the hard drive. Then reinstall Office and apply all available updates. Restore your Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage data.

If after that, Office still behaves incorrectly, then the OS is suspect, or at least its fonts. You can restore just the fonts OS X comes with by following the instructions at the bottom of Font Management in OS X.

The link, or one of the links above directs you to my personal web site. While the information is free, it does ask for a contribution. As such, I am required by Apple's rules for these discussions to include the following disclaimer.
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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