Font issue with MS Office 16.77.1 (365)

I had an ancient Bauhaus 93 Type 1 font suitcase, some Type 1 Bauhaus 93 display fonts, and an OpenType Truetype Bauhaus 93 font — all in my ~/Library/Fonts folder. That was the "detritus" that I spoke of and subsequently removed from that location. There was no longer a Bauhaus 93 entry in Font Book. The font location inside the Microsoft application bundle is not seen by Font Book that location is not among the three primary font search locations used by the operating system.

Once I achieved the first paragraph, the Bauhaus 93 font internal to Word 16.77.1 appeared on the font menu and was applied to the selected text.

Since you've already reinstalled Word, then it's highly unlikely the font is damaged.

sudo atsutil databases -remove

That command no longer works in Monterey or later. Run this one instead.

atsutil databases -removeUser

Restart after running the command and test again.

To add further clarification, the font was working in the app but stopped working sometime in Sept. It could be tied to an update I imagine and I'm the only one using that font so

Yes, that is helpful insight. That essentially proves something changed in either the OS or Office to cause Bauhaus to disappear.

Since the font appears in all other apps when a copy is activated, I'd have to say reinstalling the OS will change nothing.

You can go back to 16.77 on Microsoft's download page, and is the one just before the version you noted at the beginning of this topic. I'd try installing that version just to see if the font comes back in Office.

Or do multiple tests, like the 16.76 version, or, update it to the latest 16.78 version to see if MS fixed it.

5) run atsutil databases -removeUser and restarted - no change

That only removes the font cache data for the current logged in user account. It can't fix a coding issue for an app.

The purpose of the new account test was to see if Bauhaus93 would work there. We already know the root Library's Fonts folder is empty, as you noted the only thing there was the alias for Arial Unicode. And a new account will have no fonts in the user account Fonts folder.

That all means the only fonts the new account had any access to were those in the System folder, and those within the Office application packages. Since Bauhaus93 still didn't appear can mean a few things.

1. The code for Office 2021 and 365 is slightly different. Mostly in the means of activating the software. But, it's still a difference and somewhere in there may be a bug that causes the 365 version to misbehave.
2. The OS itself may be the problem which only an OS reinstall could fix. Make sure to have a full backup on hand, first. Then reinstall Ventura. Don't erase the drive, just reinstall the OS over itself so all of your third party apps, user account and other personal data are still there.

That last part actually isn't strange at all. The Office apps have the same set of fonts within each application package, and only each app knows they exist when looking within their own package.

Because they're not in any normal Fonts folder, nothing else on your system knows about those fonts unless you copy them out and activate whichever ones you want with Font Book, or any other font manager. Then they're just a font like any other font the system and other apps can see.

The main question though is, why can't Office see its own font? Not that Office has ever been great at handling fonts. It's been a while since I've checked, but it never sees the OS installed font, Zapf Dingbats. If you want Office to use that font, you have to copy it into each Office application package DFonts folder.

Yes. I was wondering if since all other apps can see Bauhaus93 when activated separately, if it would then show up in Office. But, no. It still ignores the font.

I stopped using Office a couple of years ago (now using the SoftMaker Office suite) and can't test MS Office without a license. It will only operate in read-only mode and won't even let me select the font drop-down menu to see if Bauhaus93 is there.

I can't imagine why Office won't list one of its own fonts, and you've done pretty much all basic troubleshooting steps. Then only one I can think of otherwise is to create a new user account, login to that and see how Office behaves.

Kurt,

I have Office 2021 for Mac installed on my M2 Mac Mini Pro (Sonoma 14.0) and I can select and apply Microsoft's Bauhaus 93 to a Word 16.77.1 document content. I had to remove some T1 Bauhaus 93 detritus from my local Fonts folder first, reboot, and then it was a done deal. No reinstallation required. Just worked.

That was some deep diving! And a heck of a time commitment to figure out where the root of the problem is.

If nothing else, you can submit your findings to MS in a bug report so they can fix the issue.

Font Book shows that I have no Bauhaus 93 font installed anywhere, and yet, I can select Bauhaus 93 from the Microsoft Word 16.78 font menu as it is part of that application's font repertoire.

Tested: Somoma 14.0