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TextEdit docs opened in MacOS 12.6 Monterey are garbled

All TextEdit documents created in earlier MacOS's (High Sierra and earlier) open as badly garbled documents in my newly-installed Monterey OS's version of TextEdit. None of the obvious Options in the Open menu works, nor does Reset Prefs. I can still open those docs just fine in the High Sierra and El Capitan versions of TextEdit on older computers.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Apr 13, 2023 4:39 PM

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Apr 18, 2023 8:43 AM in response to jfgaylord

jfgaylord wrote:

Move it "aside" to where?

Somewhere that's not a "Fonts" folder.

If I move it to the Desktop it merely copies to there. Should I rename it temporarily?

Either option would work, as would just deleting the files, as long as you have backups. I just don't know all of the deep details of how the font management system works. After removing those fonts and restarting, you'll have to run Font Book to make sure that none of those fonts are still registered. Modern versions of macOS like to copy user files to system locations when they are installed in some database-driven system like the font cache. Merely deleting files from disk is never guaranteed to work and sometimes causes huge problems.


This is a particularly bad problem where fonts are concerned because deleting fonts from disk has historically been the preferred method of font management for lots of people. But Apple doesn't respect those traditional practices - not even a little bit. Font Book is how it's done. But Font Book can get confused, especially when people have lots of legacy fonts, and likely lots of legacy font management tools.


To be clear - I'm saying that any of this is happening in your case. I'm saying I don't know. And neither do you.

Considering the evidence you uncovered that Monterey has been accessing the fonts folder from my High Sierra on the other partition

No! I didn't say that. I said the opposite. Monterey was using the fonts in your home folder on Monterey. It isn't going to go across partitions unless you have configured your system or user accounts to span those partitions too. God help you if you've done that.

shouldn't I first delete the MacOS on that partition? Or is there an 'uninstall' procedure for that?

You are kind of at the cliff edge, staring over, right now. I'm telling you that you should just let well enough alone and walk back slowly.


The Fonts folder in your home directory is where the problem is right now. You need to clean that out. Then, after restarting, make sure that your font database, as viewed in Font Book, looks good with no incompatible fonts. Then check your documents. If they work properly, then that's probably all you need to do.


There is a chance that it won't work. Maybe you have 3 other font management tools installed. Maybe you do need to nuke and re-pave eventually. I'm just saying you should try the easy, less destructive method first. You are still talking about a newly installed version of Monterey. You seem to have some "Intel" SSD? That computer sounds pretty old. Maybe when you upgrade to an Apple Silicon machine you can take that opportunity for a cleaner break with the past.

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TextEdit docs opened in MacOS 12.6 Monterey are garbled

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