Font installed, but not appearing in MS Office programs - although it does in Pages

All three of the fonts appear in Font Book, and in Pages - but only one of them appears on the font list in Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

This is an extremely common issue with Font Book. Apple should trash this font manager and start over with it. Whenever Font Book's database gets damaged, and that happens with incredible ease, you see things like this. Fonts won't appear that you've activated, will in some apps but not others, you can't add fonts to Font Book or turn others off, etc.

Restart your Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key when you hear the startup chime to boot into Safe Mode. Keep holding the Shift key until OS X asks you to log in (you will get this screen on a Safe Mode boot even if your Mac is set to automatically log in). Let the Mac finish booting to the desktop and then restart normally.

This will clear Font Book's database and the cache files of the user account you logged into in Safe Mode. In Leopard or earlier, any font sets you have created will be gone. Also, all fonts in the three main Fonts folders (System, Library, your user account) will now be active, regardless of their state beforehand. In Snow Leopard, your sets will remain intact. Don't start Font Book yet.

You also want to clear out all other remaining font cache files.

Close all running applications. From an administrator account, open the Terminal app and enter the following command. You can also copy/paste it from here into the Terminal window:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

Terminal will then ask for you to enter your admin password. As you type, it will not show anything, so be sure to enter it correctly. Press Enter.

This removes all system and user font cache files. Both for the system and all user font cache files. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.

Now you need to clear the font cache files for Office. Close all Office applications. Remove the following files. The tilde (~) indicates your home account.

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

For Office 2008, the location of the second item is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Office Font Cache (12)

For Office 2011, the location is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011/Office Font Cache

That takes care of everything except for launching Font Book so it can build a new database.

Without knowing what the fonts are and where they were installed, we aren't going to be able to help much.

However, you might peruse this useful article by Kurt Lang:

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

There's a good bit of info on MS Office and how it stores and uses fonts.

Adding briefly to the reply of noondaywitch, I read a while back that MS only permits fonts to be used that are MS-approved, so installs another font folder. Adding your font to that may not always work.

I read a while back that MS only permits fonts to be used that are MS-approved, so installs another font folder.

Whoever wrote that is a complete nincompoop. Office will use any font you have installed, just like any other program.

Kurt, you seem to know what you're talking about. I hope you can advise me. I have followed your detailed instructions to the letter. I've even gone so far as to make the font I want a system font. Nothing has worked. I simply cannot get this font to show up in Office 2011. The font in question is Souvenir Bold.ttf. I downloaded it from http://www.fontyukle.net/en/DownLoad-Souvenir+Bold.ttf. Oddly, another font I downloaded at the same time appears in the Word pull-down and is completely usable.

More details: I'm running a Macbook Pro (early 2009 version) with Snow Leopard (10.6.8, 10K549). Office 2011 version is 14.3.2 (130206). I will do my best to follow any advice as soon as I can. (Believe it or not, I need this font for a project I'm working on. Please don't tell me I have to go back to using my Windows computer!)

Thanks in advance,

Tony Lima

😕

Kurt, please ignore my previous message (unless you have way too much time on your hands). I found Soouvenir LT BT at .

http://font.downloadatoz.com/downloading,111351,souvenir-lt-bt.html. Installed it, followed your instructions to clear the various caches, and it works fine. I owe you a big one for your excellent instructions.

Thank you two-years-ago-Kurt, after hours in Terminal learning about and tidying up font permissions and extended permissions, deleting Microsoft font caches, and having a newly installed font still unavailable in Word, and after being thrown completely off the scent by this crazy red herring:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/295062

I finally stumbled across your excellent and clear advice.

And it worked flawlessly.

And I have danced around my cave in glee.

Thank you, a thousand times thank you.

And to Fontbook for chewing my morning, a thousand times the opposite of 'Thank'.

Hi Kurt - i have the same problem, and followed your advice. Restart, safe mode, sudo adsutil ....etc, restart, attempted to remove (my name)/library/preferences/microsoft/office2011/officefontcache however, i can't seem to get into and use "finder".It seems to 'phase out' every 30 - 60 seconds. Not happening here on Safari though as i'm typing to you. Your instructions said to close all files and restart immediately...i'm still in the process and can't get anywhere or use my computer for anything else! HELP please! PS in Finder, under my user name, i have library, i have preferences...but after that the directory you gave me is not the same, ire microsoft office is not there in that order.

Hi christafromsydney,

i'm still in the process and can't get anywhere or use my computer for anything else!

That's rather vague. In what process? Please try to explain exactly what you're doing, or trying to do.

under my user name, i have library, i have preferences...but after that the directory you gave me is not the same, ire microsoft office is not there in that order.

It sounds like you were looking in the root Library folder, which is the wrong location. Since the above post of mine was written, the Office 2011 Service Pack 2 (version 14.2.0) changed the location of many preference files, including the font cache data. It is now located at:

~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Preferences/Office 2011/Office Font Cache

Starting with Lion, 10.7.x, Apple decided to hide the Library folder in the user account, which is why you can't see it. There are two ways to get to your user account Library folder. One is to be at the desktop, hold down the Option key, and then from the menu bar choose Go > Library. Personally, I think this is a pain in the butt, mostly because the folder still kind of acts like it's hidden, even when you have it open. Instead, open your home folder (the one with the icon of the house) in the Users folder. With your user account folder open, press Command+J. Turn on the check box to Show Library Folder. Now the Library folder in your user account will always be shown.

Hi Kurt, thanks for getting back to me. I should have told you i'm using Mac OS X v 10.9.5 don't know if that makes a difference.

When i said "process" i meant your suggested line of activity to Daniel Gotts above ; to resolve the problem of the fonts loading beautifully into font book app but not appearing in word (i checked and it appears in pages) but not office suite.....yes you're right - i was looking for the root library directory and with this new instruction of how to find 'library" i managed to complete the full "process" that you advised for Daniel. After completing however. I still can't get the font appearing in word. Any other suggestions? BTW Font is Trade Gothic Bold condensed No.20

Does the font appear in other apps? Also, did you shut down Word and relaunch it? Office 2011 is the only app in the world I know of that does not recognize fonts you've activated after it's already up and running. You have to shut the Office apps down and relaunch them to get newly activated fonts to appear.

ok got it. yes as i said, it appears in pages. When you say "shut down and relaunch the office apps" do you mean close and restart computer, because if yes, i've done that and it doesn't change. If no, how do i "shut down and relaunch office" safely? without losing everything or not being able to relaunch. really appreciate this help. you're the first person who knows what they're talking about!

Something else, in the middle of the process that i went through from your instructions above, a strange thing has happened to my FINDER. It occurred between the removal of the item from the terminal app and the removal of the font cache. Now, when I go into FINDER the screen flashes off and comes back on again. It's happening every 30 - 60 seconds. Along with the flash off and on, the icons on my desktop disappear and reappear, also, the little symbol for FINDER down on my dock disappears and reappears. All this happens in a flash. And FINDER goes back to it's original place, not where I'm searching within the folders before it 'Flashed". Hope that makes sense and hope you know what that is :-)

No need to entirely shut down the Mac. By "shut down" Word, I mean quit that app if you activated other fonts while it was already running. Word, or any other Office app will not show any newly activated fonts in its menus until you quit the app and relaunch it. If you have to do that, save any files you've been working on first, of course.

Assuming you typed in the above Terminal command correctly, the only thing it removes are the font cache files on the drive for both those created by the OS, and those created by the apps you use. New cache files are then created when you restart. So nothing important lost there. The second part is to manually remove the separate font cache data Office creates and uses since the Terminal command won't remove that one.

Neither of those can cause the weird Finder issue you're having. It sounds like the Finder is somewhat randomly and spontaneously crashing and relaunching. For something like that, you may need to reinstall the OS. Though to do a quick test, create a new user account and login to it. If the system works as expected in the new account, then the Finder issue is being caused by something specific to your normal account. If the behavior is the same, then it's an OS issue.

cannot thank you enough for this post Kurt! Literally saved my *** many time - when clients have their own custom fonts for Presentations and Powerpoint doesnt recognize that Ive loaded them! phew!

Thank you thank you thank you!

Hi Kurt I am contacting you as you seem to know what you are doing and I am extremely desperate to get this fixed [see below for details]. Everything in my business is related to this font! Please help! I am also happy to pay $50 for a very simple, basic step by step [dot point] instructions on how to fix this! Please help!

I just upgraded to Office 2016 for Mac and the font that I use for all my business document no longer works.

I need a Mac and Office expert to fix this urgently.

Years worth of important documents have been converted to a different (ugly) font, ruining the format and making them unreadable. I know I can select all and change the font however this font is specific to my business and logo! I do not want a different font!

I understand there is a way of getting office 2016 to recognise my font! I am very computer literate however can not seem to do this!

Font is GiveMeTime

Thankyou

Tracey