Office:Mac and Corrupted Fonts

Simply start adding back fonts a couple at a time. When the problem arises you will have identified the likely problem font(s) and can then remove or replace them.

You should not have to restart the computer each time you add back a couple of fonts. If you are using a font manager, then simply activate a font or two then check with Office to see if there's a problem.

You should also check for any duplicate fonts and be sure to remove the duplicates so you have only one copy of each font. Also check to see if you have Times RO and HelveticaFractions. If so, remove them.

Kappy has given you terrific advice, you should award him a star.

Also, if you're a craps shooter, you might try replacing half your fonts on the first go and see if you get lucky. You never know 😉


-mj
macjack@gmail.com

Hi Chipfly, Welcome to Apple's Users Help Users Forums

Hilight the font in question and then click on resolve duplicates.

Yes, that is a puzzle. Perhaps your problem lies elsewhere. Try the following:

Boot from your Tiger DVD. After the installer loads select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your OS X volume from the list on the left, click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (3.0.3 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.1.1 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

If that does not help, then you may have a corrupted font cache and/or preference files. The following may prove helpful:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607542&#607542.

You can also download one of the several utilities used to perform maintenance and use it to clear the font caches. I recommend Tinkertool System, but there are others from which to choose. You will find them all at www.versiontracker.com.

Chipfly, I too have had the same problem you are talking about. It is very frustrating. I verified all of my fonts and they were fine but Word kept telling me that many of them were corrupt including the System fonts. There is something about Tiger and Microsoft Word. Apparantly the font cache has become corrupt. Someone gave me this advice. It worked. Restart your computer in Safe mode (holding the shift key). When it starts up, open Word. Then quit and restart your computer. This has worked for me lately.

Hi chipfly,

Corrupt font caches are likely the problem. Stamper's suggestion forces Tiger to remove the font caches for Font Book, which is a good start. To remove almost all of the remaining font cache files, use Font Finagler.

Then remove the caches specific to Office. Remove the following two files. The tilde (~) indicates your home account.

~/Library/Caches/.com.microsoft.browserfont.cache

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

I too have this problem and have tried most of the above mentioned remedies.

Every time make a change in font book I have to empty the font cache for any of the Microsoft Office programs work.

I am not absolutely sure as it is now quite some time that I have put with this problem but I think it started after deleting duplicate fonts in font book.

Hi Bundy,

That the problem keeps recurring suggests that you have a corrupt font. This will corrupt Font Book's font cache and/or database. You'll need to root out the bad fonts to eliminate the problem.

Pull all fonts out of the /Library/Fonts/ folder and your user account at ~/Library/Fonts/. Just put them in a dummy folder on the desktop.

Replace all system fonts by installing fresh copies from the OS X Install CD/DVD. The instructions to do this are in Font management in Mac OS X Tiger and Panther. It's the last section. This will put all new copies of the fonts that come with OS X on your hard drive.

Follow the steps in Undoing Font Book to reset the application and clear its font caches once again. Run Font Finagler and clear the MS Office font caches.

With all new fonts, new font caches and a clean Font Book, everything should work normally. Delete any duplicate fonts from the dummy folder you created that reinstalling the fonts placed on your hard drive. That should leave only those you added yourself. Place them into the /Library/Fonts/ folder five at a time. If the problems return, you know at least one of the fonts you added is bad.

Hi Kurt,
thanks for your reply,

I am not so sure it is a corrupt font as the problem only occurs when I have changed font book and in most cases that is just adding a new font.

If I clear the font cache with OnyX things work okay for days after with restarts and using many programs up until the change is made in Font Book then I must run OnyX again.
If was a corrupt font would the problem not occur more often?

Thank again for your help.

Then Font Book, or the OS itself may be damaged. It's the long way around, but an Archive and Install should certainly fix things. If you do that, make sure to select the options to preserve your user settings and preferences.