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Daniel Gotts Author

Level 1

80 points

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

Hi there,

I've recently installed (earlier this year) three new fonts used by a voluntary organisation I work with. 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. The two that don't appear are the regular and bold versions of the same typeface - the other one is unrelated.

I have restarted the computer and resolved duplicate fonts in Font Book.

I'm running MS Office 2008 on my MacBook Pro - it is running OS X 10.6.8.

Thanks for any help,

Daniel.

Posted on Sep 10, 2011 10:25 AM

Top-ranking reply

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,388 points

Posted on Sep 11, 2011 9:04 AM

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.

View in context

25 replies

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,388 points

Jan 24, 2016 4:05 PM in response to Tracey Brock

Hello Tracy,

That was one seriously screwed up font! There was no way to fix this by just playing with settings in the OS or anywhere else other than manually, and correctly rebuilding the font from scratch.

Email me: retoucher at jklstudios dot com

I can then send the rebuilt and regenerated font back to you.

judyp3

Level 1

13 points

Aug 2, 2016 12:27 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Hi Kurt: I am running Office 11 and Frutiger is not showing up in the font list in Word although it is installed and showing up in all my other programs. I am running Office on my Mac, btw. I went through the steps you listed except when I tried to remove the Office Font Cache from the Preferences folder it wasn't there. Any additional advice would be much appreciated.

Judy

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,388 points

Aug 2, 2016 12:46 PM in response to judyp3

Hello judyp3,

You may have missed this part if you didn't read through the entire topic:

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

The tilde ~ means your user account. Not the Library folder you see next to Applications, System, etc.

Frutiger is not a font included with Snow Leopard, so unless you have a bad font, only half of a Type 1 PostScript font, of another Frutiger font active (which will cause a conflict with that font and the one you're trying to use), it should work.

Clearing the Office 2011 font cache file may help, but it's low on the list of things that fix font issues.

judyp3

Level 1

13 points

Aug 2, 2016 1:41 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Thanks for the info on the new location - I did that but the font still is not showing up. There are no other Frutiger fonts, I and can use the font in all other programs so it can't be bad, so there must be another source of the problem. I will keep searching. Thanks,

Judy

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,388 points

Aug 2, 2016 2:18 PM in response to judyp3

Forgot to add. All versions of MS Office for Mac have this annoying quirk. Any font you enable after Word, Excel, etc. are already running will not show up as a font you can choose. You must shut down the Office app and relaunch it.

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,388 points

May 21, 2015 6:21 AM in response to Lam Lam

Haha! 😁 Thank you for the humorous post. And you're welcome. 🙂

May 26, 2015 8:24 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Hi Kurt, managed to fix finder with your info - thank you! Unfortunately haven't fixed font issue.

going to get in touch with Microsoft Office for Mac team and see if have any joy! Cheers

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,388 points

May 27, 2015 6:44 AM in response to christafromsydney

Please send the font to me at: retoucher at jklstudios dot com

It's either royally damaged, or you have only one half of an older Type 1 PostScript font.

judyp3

Level 1

13 points

Aug 2, 2016 3:07 PM in response to Kurt Lang

I assumed I had to do that and did it several times with no luck.

alexpalm

Level 1

4 points

Oct 23, 2016 8:41 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Thanks Kurt: This procedure worked beautifully for me! Thanks again! Take care, Alessandro

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