Font Book seems to be stuck. It won't load or delete fonts or respond. Can it be reinstalled?

Yes, you are correct (my article even states it). The .ttf and .ttc fonts installed by Office 2011 are newer than those installed by any currently available version of OS X. So just toss the Fonts Disabled folder, which are the versions OS X installed, moved there by Office.

OK, thanks for the confirmation. I appreciate the time and effort you put into making this information available. I have not just read but have studied your article. There are just some things that are confusing, I think because the article has been updated over time, and it's not always clear what is applicable now to someone reading it all at once.

The reason I inquired about the Office fonts is because that section in the article starts out with a list of the older fonts without extensions and says they should be kept because many web sites use them and won't display properly without them. Later it says web sites can use the newer fonts and to delete the old ones. If it said that websites used to require these fonts but don't anymore, it would be clear.

Regarding the fonts disabled folder, I did read in your article that it can be deleted, but then you said in a previous post in this discussion that I should move the fonts out of the fonts disabled folder and back into the fonts folder because they are newer than the Office versions. Also, you have said in some places to keep the fonts you remove in another folder, but here you say to delete, do you mean put in the trash, or just remove from the active font folders listed in Section 6?

BTW, I erred when I said that you can't see version info in list view, you can enable this, although it doesn't show as much information as column view: This brings up another question - fonts I want to keep that are not on your minimum list, for instance Garamond. I see Garamond (no extension) in the Microsoft folder, and AGaramondPro (above) in the Fonts folder. AGaramondPro is an OpenType font, Garamond is a legacy font, so I should keep AGaramondPro, right? I understand that postscript fonts are used for prepress and other particular situations, but there's no problem with using a postscript font in everyday uses, is there?

I understand from your article that conflicts are created by two fonts having the same internal name. How do I determine if two fonts have the same internal name? Looking in font book/info for AGaramondPro (it is not easy to find - all the adobe fonts are listed after the z's), it is listed as Adobe Garamond Pro. If you click on the info button, you find Adobe Garamond Pro, postscript name: AGaramondPro-[Regular], kind: OpenType Postscript, "Unique name" 2.112;ADBE;AGaramondPro-Regular;ADOBE.

Garamond's postscript name is Garamond, kind is TrueType, "Unique name": Monotype-Garamond Regular. Is the "unique name" the same as the internal name? So in the case of these two fonts, there would not be a conflict, I could keep and use both if I want to, correct? I'm not a graphic designer, but I'm a calligrapher and I appreciate these things.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your knowledge on these discussions.

There are just some things that are confusing, I think because the article has been updated over time, and it's not always clear what is applicable now to someone reading it all at once.

And I actually agree with that. It's difficult to keep old information in the article for users still on older Macs, using older versions of software, along with the newer info and still trying to keep it clear.

The reason I inquired about the Office fonts is because that section in the article starts out with a list of the older fonts without extensions and says they should be kept because many web sites use them and won't display properly without them.

That again is if it applies to you (older Macs and software). Section 1 does state to use the newer .ttf and .ttc versions of the web fonts. Section 3, which I'm assuming you're referring to, also has an addendum right below the note about the fonts with no extensions being replaced by the new versions under Expanded font list for Leopard through Mountain Lion: . It also states, So the font list for Leopard through Mountain Lion will appear as follows to match the visually shorter list above: .

It can be a bit confusing to read through, but I couldn't think of a better way to present both pieces of information.

Regarding the fonts disabled folder, I did read in your article that it can be deleted, but then you said in a previous post in this discussion that I should move the fonts out of the fonts disabled folder and back into the fonts folder because they are newer than the Office versions.

Yes, which I corrected above when I replied, Yes, you are correct. Ignore any directions of moving any fonts out of the Fonts Disabled folder back into the /Library/Fonts/ folder. You'd just be replacing the newer fonts installed by Office 2011. Not that any great tragedy would occur if you did. You likely wouldn't even notice a difference.

Also, you have said in some places to keep the fonts you remove in another folder, but here you say to delete, do you mean put in the trash, or just remove from the active font folders listed in Section 6?

As for keeping fonts, that refers to many of those OS X comes with, but have no need of being active 100% of the time. Put those somewhere else and activate those fonts when you want to use them.

Delete means delete. Trash 'em. Everything in the Fonts Disabled folder conflicts with the identically named fonts installed by Office 2011. There's no reason to keep them. You also need to delete the older legacy Mac TrueType fonts Office installs which conflict with the newer .ttc and .ttf fonts. So in short, delete the entire Fonts Disabled folder (including the folder), and the following fonts Office 2011 also installs:

Andale Mono

Arial Black

Arial Narrow

Arial Rounded Bold

Comic Sans MS

Georgia

Impact

Tahoma

Trebuchet MS

Again, be aware that those listed above have no file extension. Don't remove the otherwise same named items which end in .ttc or .ttf.

This brings up another question - fonts I want to keep that are not on your minimum list, for instance Garamond.

The lists are just a guide to get any Mac system down to the bare basics. You can leave whatever fonts you want. If you use Garamond a lot, then leave it in the Fonts folder.

AGaramondPro is an OpenType font, Garamond is a legacy font, so I should keep AGaramondPro, right?

You likely installed some sort of Adobe software to get AGaramondPro.otf (and its companion Italic and Bold-Italic fonts) on your drive. OS X doesn't supply any version of Garamond. The Mac legacy Garamond font was installed by Office 2011. These fonts have different internal names and can exist at the same time without conflicting.

There's also no good reason to keep both since the older legacy font installed by Office also has a regular, italic and bold-italic font in it. You'd just have two sets of of basically the same fonts if you had both active. The Adobe fonts are much more complete with lots of ligatures and other glyphs not included with the Office 2011 supplied version of Garamond. So I'd delete the Garamond font and use the Adobe .otf versions.

I understand that postscript fonts are used for prepress and other particular situations, but there's no problem with using a postscript font in everyday uses, is there?

The one PostScript item all OS's support so you don't require a PostScript printer to use them is fonts. Windows, OS X, etc. can all use PS fonts just as transparently to the user as TrueType. So it doesn't matter if you mix and match font types.

How do I determine if two fonts have the same internal name?

If they do, and you activate both fonts, one or the other will disappear from your menus. Possibly both. But the only way to really know is by using a font editor. That way you can open the font and look at its naming structure. You'd see something like this:

Is the "unique name" the same as the internal name?

Unfortunately, no. There's nothing in the Get Info dialogue, or in any font manager that will show you the internal names.

This is as bad as trying to find plumbing fittings that match! Thanks for your help - I am making progress. Word and Excel are already much faster but I am glad to weed out the fonts I will probably never use. In the process I have become aware of some I like that I had never looked at before.

One glitch was that I had to go into Get Info in the /Library/Fonts folder and add read-write permissions to "everyone" in order to move fonts from there into my "sequestered" folder. It would copy them, it would let me trash them with authentication, but it wouldn't let me move them even with read/write enabled for "admin".

Hi Kurt.

I'm hoping you can help me too.

I'm on a brand new iMac. OSX10.8.4.

I've downloaded around 10,000 fonts from http://www.1001freefonts.com and duly installed them in batches by letter into fontbook, taking care to delete any files that the install manager said could be corrupted (that had a red X on install).

Now I can now see ALL of these fonts in Pages and Keynote (fantastic)... but I only see a small selection in Word and Powerpoint Mac 2011 (and those ones that are listed run from the A's to the B's and then stop, carrying on with the standard Office fonts thereafter).

I have 2 problems.

- when I open fontbook it's frozen (I have 8,188 fonts there, many of which have the 'off' tag next to them.) I can't scroll up or down in fontbook, open fontbook preferences or even select a font to display on the right hand side.

I am trying to get into fontbook to go through the fonts one at a time (groan) to delete the ones that don't display correctly (that have a sort of hieroglyph in the display on the right hand side, as I had read these might be corrupted). I am hoping that deleting these files will eliminate the problems caused by any install corruption.

- I can't see all the fonts in Office. I have rebooted holding shift to reset the cache several times. No good. I have deleted these files as you suggested above from the Library>Fonts>Microsoft folder as well as the disabled fonts folder:

Andale Mono

Arial Black

Arial Narrow

Arial Rounded Bold

Comic Sans MS

Georgia

Impact

Tahoma

Trebuchet MS

Is it possible to have all fonts available in Microsoft packages? It looks like there's come kind of number limit.

but I only see a small selection in Word and Powerpoint Mac 2011 (and those ones that are listed run from the A's to the B's and then stop, carrying on with the standard Office fonts thereafter).

It's most likely the apps. Older versions of Adobe's software was also like that. If I remember right, any versions before CS2. The limit was around 500 fonts. Didn't matter how many OS X said were open, the CS or earlier apps would show the open fonts alphabetically up to the cutoff point and just stop. Not sure what the limit is for Office 2011 (I did test it at one time, but don't remember the results), but you sure seem to be hitting one.

- when I open Font Book it's frozen (I have 8,188 fonts there, many of which have the 'off' tag next to them.) I can't scroll up or down in Font Book, open Font Book preferences or even select a font to display on the right hand side.

Off or not, Font Book still has to keep track of all the fonts copied to your user account (default location), and then tell the OS whether or not they're supposed to be active. Otherwise, they all would be. Font Book is not good at large numbers of fonts. It just isn't. It's a light use font manager for home users who don't usually add more than a couple hundred more fonts than what already came with the OS, or a package like Office will dump on the drive.

I have deleted these files as you suggested above from the Library>Fonts>Microsoft folder as well as the disabled fonts folder:

That's good, since those will conflict with the OpenType fonts on the system by the same name.

Is it possible to have all fonts available in Microsoft packages? It looks like there's come kind of number limit.

I would say "no". You'd have to get the number of active fonts down to what Office can list. I have a moment here to play, so I'm going to load up a bunch of fonts and see what number Office cuts off at.

Still not sure. I currently have almost 2600 fonts open, but Word 2011 did manage to show all of them. However, it's a painful experience to wait over a minute each time you click on the font list for it to show you a WYSIWYG display of that many fonts before you can even select one. This would pretty much be the same result in any app when you have that many open.

Best thing to do is to activate all fonts that start with the letter A and print out sample sheets. Then disable those and do B. Continue on through the alphabet until you have a book of all fonts you have. Then keep your active fonts to a minimum and refer to your book when you're looking for something unique. Activate what's needed.

Lots of work, but sometimes a better method is to separate your printout samples by style. Like all standard book type fonts. All sans serif fonts. All script fonts, etc.

Lots of fonts can be fun to have (lots of choices), but a pain to manage in large numbers.