"This document has missing fonts." Which fonts? And does it matter?

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Level 1

23 points

"This document has missing fonts." Which fonts? And does it matter?

"This document has missing fonts." This is a message I often get on opening a Pages file that I've created myself.

The pop-up message has a > at one end and a ? at the other but neither helps me to find out which font is missing or leads to any information on what to do about it.

What's going on? How do I find out which fonts are missing, whether or not it matters, and what to do about it?

BTW, I use 2 late-model iMacs with Sonoma 14.5 in English and Japanese in the same doc.

Each week, I update last week's doc, and copy to make a new one for this week. I rarely choose new fonts.

TIA

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jun 3, 2024 10:51 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 4, 2024 6:04 AM in response to Simon Varnam

Pages requires that fonts referenced in a Word or Pages document be installed and locatable on the Mac. If they are not found, then you will get the missing font warning dialog, and Pages will attempt to perform automatic font substitution (probably Times or Times New Roman). There is no audit trail about what fonts were not found if the font names were not mentioned in that warning dialog.

Both MS Word and Pages use font references in their respective documents that are resolved when the installed font is found in macOS. Only MS Word has the Embed fonts in the file option on its Save Preference panel.

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Answer 2

Jun 5, 2024 5:02 AM in response to Simon Varnam

Place the specific Pages document on your Desktop. Launch the Terminal application and enter the following in the Terminal as shown below. Leave a space after kMDItemFonts and then drag and drop the Pages document from the Finder onto the Terminal window and then press return. You will see a list of font names in the Pages document.

cd ~/Desktop
mdls -name kMDItemFonts

I offered this as a non-coding approach to discovering fonts in Pages documents. It can be done in AppleScript too.

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Answer 3

Jun 5, 2024 6:24 AM in response to Simon Varnam

No trouble. Hope you have this sorted now.

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Answer 4

Simon Varnam Author

Level 1

23 points

Jun 4, 2024 8:06 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you, VikingOSX.

Since the font is used in the document opened it, would be very useful to know where it is used and replace it so that this error message is not shown every time the file is opened.

Is there a way to find a list of fonts used in a document without out checking every single character manually? Checking the font in the "Text" window only shows "Muliple Fonts".

TIA

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Answer 5

Simon Varnam Author

Level 1

23 points

Jun 5, 2024 6:17 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you,

I clicked on the > after the "This document has missing fonts" error message and (this time) was shown a list of fonts.

Your Terminal technique also showed the fonts used in the doc, but the only difference I could see from the list above was that HelveticaNeue was also listed as HelveticaNeue-Bold.

There is bold HelveticaNeue in the doc, and it appears as bold.

It doesn't look as if there is really a problem to worry about. Sorry to trouble you.

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"This document has missing fonts." Which fonts? And does it matter?

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