Arial font problem - only in Pages

I'm having a problem with the Arial font in Pages. My text was coming out squeezed together, so after trying to deal with the problem using Font Book to no avail, I deleted Arial and reinstalled a version from another Mac. That version seemed to fix the squished text problem, but now I am unable to select a block of text which is in Arial and either make it bold or italic. It's just unresponsive. I thought to try it in Text Edit, and the Arial font works fine there. Any ideas?

MacBook Air, iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Apr 27, 2010 5:40 PM

40 replies

fruhulda

Level 6

15,167 points

May 2, 2010 8:05 AM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

Have you tried Select all text in an old document and applied the arial font you have? Save again. Does it work now?

There is something wrong in your old template which pops up now, maybe because you have MacOs 10.6.3 now.

I think you have a lot of work before you to get the old documents in a new version that is working font wise.

Maybe Yvan can make a script to open and save the documents to Pages08?

May 2, 2010 8:24 AM in response to fruhulda

No, it doesn't work to select all text from an old document and paste it, even into the new template that Yvan made me. I even tried pasting the text, then selecting all and changing the font to Baskerville. That worked fine, and the bold and italic functioned as they should, but when I selected again and tried to change the font back to Arial, it wouldn't change to Arial. It remained in Baskerville font.

Something is contained in the text from the old documents that is preventing Pages from working correctly. I'm not sure how to deal with changing all these old docs over. I guess I'll have to convert them to plain text first, to remove formatting?

fruhulda

Level 6

15,167 points

May 2, 2010 8:37 AM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

I didn't write select and paste. I wrote select and change the font in the existing document, but I gather the it wont work either.

HAve you tried to save as iWork08? You can do that in Pages09 you know. Did it work for you? Or was it just my copy that worked?

To save to RTF which I did with you copy and then open in textEdit and re-save might help.

May 2, 2010 8:44 AM in response to fruhulda

I am able to select and change the font in the existing document. That might be the easiest thing to do - just go with another font. Still would have to change 200+ docs manually, unless there's some sort of batch operation that would do that.

I was able to save as iWork08, then re-save in Pages 09 - and the Arial font worked fine. Not sure if that would be easier, though, as it seems to involve an extra step - however, it also seems to remove the "demon" that is causing Arial to act up.

fruhulda

Level 6

15,167 points

May 2, 2010 9:27 AM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

As I said could maybe Yvan create a script for batch saving to Pages08 from 09. He has created one doing the reverse.

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,825 points

May 2, 2010 2:35 PM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

I apologize but the culprit is not the document.

On my system, it behaves perfectly.

There is something in your system which fools Pages.
What if you copy/paste to TextEdit ?

Tomorrow I will write a script which will replace every occurence of ArialMT or ArialMS by a reference to an other SansSerif font.

Are you OK for LucidaGrande ?

I will also replace the references to TimesNewRomanPSMT or TimesNewRomanMS by a reference to a serif font.

Are you OK for Palatino ?

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 2 mai 2010 23:34:18

May 2, 2010 2:46 PM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Yes, thanks very much Yvan!

May 2, 2010 2:50 PM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

Update:

It is now working fine. I don't understand, but I have opened several existing documents created in Pages with my old template, and the Arial font is working perfectly. I don't understand which step did it, but it appears to be fine.

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,825 points

May 3, 2010 2:39 AM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

Good news. So, one of your Arial fonts is the ArialMS one.

I will be glad to get it.

Is it useful to write the script changing the embedded fonts ?

For sure, I will write it one day but it's just matter of priority 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 3 mai 2010 11:38:50

internex

Level 1

0 points

May 28, 2010 6:53 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Hey, I also had a problem with that stupid Arial font. I couldn't find the solution for it anywhere, so I decided to solve it myself.
What I did is I searched for files with "Arial" in their name on my hard drive and found one located in MS Office folder. After I moved it to trash and restarted Pages, Arial started behaving normally. I hope this one works for everyone else.

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Arial font problem - only in Pages