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I need a font book factory reset & a clean slate

My font book is is a mess! I have duplicate fonts in about 4 different directories (my fault) and want a fresh start. I did an "export" of my fonts but I am unsure how to do a factory reset. I've read the Font Management in OS X doc but am unclear if clearing the cache will bring me back to just the basic system fonts or only clears the history.


Do I need to go in and delete ("file ----> remove font") the fonts in font book one by one and THEN clear the cache before reinstalling the ones I want in the ONE directory folder where I want them to live? (lesson learned). I have 1200 (not including the duplicates) fonts that I need to sift through and am looking for the fastest way to do this without losing the key system fonts for Mac, Office 2011 and Adobe CS5 Creative Suite.


Is that amount of installed fonts still manageable with font book or should I be looking at a different font management solultion? I can't answer that for myself until I make it manageable with only ONE copy of each font 🙂


Thanks in advance for your help! I promise that I've read through this site and have been googling all day but haven't been sure about resetting the it all back to square one 🙂


Tara

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Office 2011, cs5

Posted on Aug 5, 2012 11:56 PM

Reply
3 replies

Aug 6, 2012 5:57 AM in response to CurlysGirly

There isn't an easy, singular answer to your question, though it would be fairly straightforward if it weren't for Office. I am curious how you arrived at 4 directories of fonts. There are only three Fonts folders OS X looks at. The ones in the System folder, the main Library folder, and the one in the active user account. Since you shouldn't even be looking in the System folder (if you don't know what you're doing), the only two places you should have any fonts you've added would be the main Library and your account.


Anyway, start by launching Font Book. Delete any Font sets or Library sets you have created. Close Font Book. Create a new folder on the desktop. Call it "mine". Anything you want really, just so it refers to the fonts in your user account. Go to the Fonts folder in your user account and move all fonts out of that folder to the new one on the desktop. Create another new folder on the desktop named "lib". Open the /Library/Fonts/ folder and move all fonts into the second new folder. Both the /Library/Fonts/ folder, and the Fonts folder in your user account should be empty.


Follow the instructions at the bottom of Font Management in OS X to restore all fonts from the Snow Leopard DVD. You will be using Pacifist to restore both the System and Library fonts. When you're done, your fonts will be back to the way the were when you first installed OS X.


From the desktop folder you named "lib". Move Hoefler Text.ttc and STHeiti Medium.ttc to the /Library/Fonts/ folder. Replace the versions you just restored with these newer versions. They were updated in 10.6.5.


Office 2011 installs many newer versions of fonts OS X comes with. Move these fonts from the 'lib" folder into the /Library/Fonts/ folder so you again replace the ones you just restored.


Arial.ttf

Arial Italic.ttf

Arial Bold.ttf

Arial Bold Italic.ttf

Brush Script.ttf

Times New Roman.ttf

Times New Roman Italic.ttf

Times New Roman Bold.ttf

Times New Roman Bold Italic.ttf

Verdana.ttf

Verdana Italic.ttf

Verdana Bold.ttf

Verdana Bold Italic.ttf

Wingdings.ttf

Wingdings 2.ttf

Wingdings 3.ttf


Here's where it gets a bit trickier. Office 2011 also installs a number of old fonts which conflict with the newer .ttf OpenType fonts. Delete these from the "lib" folder on your desktop. Note that they do not have a file extension.


Andale Mono

Arial Black

Arial Narrow

Arial Rounded Bold

Comic Sans MS

Georgia

Impact

Tahoma

Trebuchet MS


Without being able to see what you have left in the "lib" folder, I can't easily say what you can move back into the /Library/Fonts/ folder. So I'll list everything else Office 2011 installs that you can move back in. Office uses many of these for its supplied templates. Cambria is the default font family for Word.


Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold

Abadi MT Condensed Light

Baskerville Old Face

Batang.ttf

Bauhaus 93

Bell MT

Bernard MT Condensed

Book Antiqua

Bookman Old Style

Bookshelf Symbol 7.ttf

Braggadocio

Britannic Bold

Calibri Bold Italic.ttf

Calibri Bold.ttf

Calibri Italic.ttf

Calibri.ttf

Calisto MT

Cambria Bold Italic.ttf

Cambria Bold.ttf

Cambria Italic.ttf

Cambria Math.ttf

Cambria.ttf

Candara Bold Italic.ttf

Candara Bold.ttf

Candara Italic.ttf

Candara.ttf

Century

Century Gothic

Century Schoolbook

Colonna

Consolas Bold Italic.ttf

Consolas Bold.ttf

Consolas Italic.ttf

Consolas.ttf

Constantia Bold Italic.ttf

Constantia Bold.ttf

Constantia Italic.ttf

Constantia.ttf

Cooper Black

Copperplate Gothic Bold

Copperplate Gothic Light

Corbel Bold Italic.ttf

Corbel Bold.ttf

Corbel Italic.ttf

Corbel.ttf

Curlz MT

Desdemona

Edwardian Script ITC

Engravers MT

Eurostile

Footlight Light

Franklin Gothic Book Italic.ttf

Franklin Gothic Book.ttf

Franklin Gothic Medium Italic.ttf

Franklin Gothic Medium.ttf

Gabriola.ttf

Garamond

Gill Sans MT Bold Italic.ttf

Gill Sans MT Bold.ttf

Gill Sans MT Italic.ttf

Gill Sans MT.ttf

Gill Sans Ultra Bold

Gloucester MT Extra Condensed

Goudy Old Style

Gulim.ttf

Haettenschweiler

Harrington

Imprint MT Shadow

Kino

Lucida Blackletter

Lucida Bright

Lucida Calligraphy

Lucida Console.ttf

Lucida Fax

Lucida Handwriting

Lucida Sans

Lucida Sans Typewriter

Lucida Sans Unicode.ttf

Marlett.ttf

Matura Script Capitals

Meiryo Bold Italic.ttf

Meiryo Bold.ttf

Meiryo Italic.ttf

Meiryo.ttf

Mistral

Modern No. 20

Monotype Corsiva

Monotype Sorts

MS Gothic.ttf

MS Mincho.ttf

MS PGothic.ttf

MS PMincho.ttf

MS Reference Sans Serif.ttf

MS Reference Specialty.ttf

MT Extra

News Gothic MT

Onyx

Palatino Linotype Bold Italic.ttf

Palatino Linotype Bold.ttf

Palatino Linotype Italic.ttf

Palatino Linotype.ttf

Perpetua Bold Italic.ttf

Perpetua Bold.ttf

Perpetua Italic.ttf

Perpetua Titling MT

Perpetua.ttf

Playbill

PMingLiU.ttf

Rockwell

Rockwell Extra Bold

SimSun.ttf

Stencil

Tw Cen MT Bold Italic.ttf

Tw Cen MT Bold.ttf

Tw Cen MT Italic.ttf

Tw Cen MT.ttf

Wide Latin


Anything you have left in the "lib" folder on your desktop will either be duplicates, or fonts installed by other third party apps. That will essentially be true of any fonts you moved out of your user account. I can't tell you which, if any of these, would need to be moved back in. For now, combine the two into a single folder and store them away anywhere not in any of the three Fonts on the hard drive. There will be a bunch of them as CS5 installs a slew of fonts. None of which it needs to operate.


That's as far as I can help with the fonts themselves.


Now open Disk Utility and run a Repair Permissions on your startup drive. Moving the fonts around will cause them to have permissions OS X doesn't like. Mainly just because you moved them back into the /Library/Fonts/ folder and it will want to change the permissions to OS X as the owner simply because of where they are.


Last few things to do.


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 you see a progress bar towards the bottom of the screen. You can let go of the Shift key at that point.


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.


Next to take care of the System's 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 your admin password. As you type, it will not show anything, so be sure to enter it correctly.


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


Last step when back at the desktop. Launch Font Book so it can create a new database based on the fonts currently in the drive's three Fonts folders.


There should be no duplicates. Everything OS X and Office installs will be available.

Aug 8, 2012 1:31 AM in response to Kurt Lang

I cannot begin to tell you how thankful I am for your help!! I am working through this and installed Pacifist to restore my system and library fonts. Following the instructions and inserting my Mac OS X Install DVD, I get an error message after clicking the 3rd button from the Pacifist main menu and selecting the name of the disk I inserted that says "

The following exception occurred while attempting to read the archive “OSInstall.mpkg”:


*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle readDataOfLength:]: Input/output error"


So I cannot complete the font restoration.


Right now I have the following in System/Library/Fonts:

Apple Braille Outline 6 Dot.ttf

Apple Braille Outline 8 Dot.ttf

Apple Braille Pinpoint 6 Dot.ttf

Apple Braille Pinpoint 8 Dot.ttf

Apple Braille.ttf

Apple Symbols.ttf

AppleGothic.ttf

AquaKana.ttc

Courier.dfont

encodings.dir

fonts.dir

fonts.list

fonts.scale

Geeza Pro Bold.ttf

Geeza Pro.ttf

Geneva.dfont

HelveLTMM

Helvetica LT MM

Helvetica.dfont

HelveticaLight.ttf

HelveticaLightItalic.ttf

HelveticaNeue.dfont

Keyboard.ttf

LastResort.ttf

LucidaGrande.ttc

Menlo.ttc

Monaco.dfont

soundfx.ttf

STHeiti Light.ttc

Symbol.ttf

Thonburi.ttf

ThonburiBold.ttf

Times LT MM

Times.dfont

TimesLTMM

ZapfDingbats.ttf

ヒラギノ明朝 ProN W3.otf

ヒラギノ明朝 ProN W6.otf

ヒラギノ角ゴ ProN W3.otf

ヒラギノ角ゴ ProN W6.otf

儷黑 Pro.ttf

华文细黑.ttf

华文黑体.ttf


Can any of those be removed or should I just leave it alone?


Now that my /Library/Fonts/ folder is empty, I can just add in the ones I need by hand? I think all that needs to be in there is:

Arial.ttf

Arial Bold.ttf

Arial Italic.ttf

Arial Bold Italic.ttf

Arial Black.ttf

Arial Narrow.ttf

Arial Narrow Bold.ttf

Arial Narrow Italic.ttf

Arial Narrow Bold Italic.ttf

Comic Sans MS.ttf

Comic Sans MS Bold.ttf

Georgia.ttf

Georgia Italic.ttf

Georgia Bold.ttf

Georgia Bold Italic.ttf

Impact.ttf

Tahoma.ttf

Tahoma Bold.ttf

Trebuchet MS.ttf

Trebuchet MS Bold.ttf

Trebuchet MS Italic.ttf

Trebuchet MS Bold Italic.ttf

Verdana.ttf

Verdana Bold.ttf

Verdana Italic.ttf

Verdana Bold Italic.ttf

Wingdings.ttf

Wingdings 2.ttf

Wingdings 3.ttf

Webdings.ttf

MarkerFelt.ttc


Thanks in advance for your help!!!


Tara

I need a font book factory reset & a clean slate

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