Weird issue with .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface

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Level 1

14 points

Weird issue with .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface

Yosemite uses ".Helvetica Neue DeskInterface" as the system font. It shouldn't be accessible as a regular font; plain old "Helvetica Neue" is there for that. It should be impossible for me to format text in a document in the system font and yet it since at least December 2014 it has shown up in my list of fonts in Microsoft Word and Excel.

Specifically, it shows up as the following fonts:

System Font Heavy
System Font Medium Italic P4
System Font Medium P4
System Font Regular
System Font Thin
System Font UltraLight
Tipo de letra del sistema Fina

Interestingly, the Bold, Bold Italic, and Italic versions of the system font are not shown. Why the name of the Light version is appearing in Spanish is a total mystery.

So I know something's amiss but can't figure out what. So far, I haven't found any actual problems to be caused by this improper appearance of a system font among regular fonts but it makes me uneasy. I've cleared and rebuilt all font caches but it hasn't made any difference. I created a clean new user account but the behavior appears there as well.

Yesterday I did a clean install of Yosemite (wiped drive, installed OS, migrated settings from clone of HD) for unrelated reasons. Much to my bafflement, the .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface fonts are still showing up in Word and Excel.

Can anyone make any suggestions to help me figure this weird situation out?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), 13-inch, Early 2011

Posted on Feb 23, 2015 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,014 points

Feb 23, 2015 11:24 AM in response to Daniel Holt2

The ones with "System Font" as part of their name are indeed part of the font family name of some (but not all) of the 10 fonts in the HelveticaNeueDeskInterface.ttc font package. Why they're showing up is another matter. I also installed Yosemite from scratch on an erased drive. Office 2011 does not show any of these fonts on my system. Which it shouldn't since the file name begins with a period. Are you using Office 2008? That may be the difference for that font. I can't test it right now.

Tipo de letra del sistema Fina appeared with 10.10.2. I was thinking maybe that one of the system fonts has an extra FOND entry which causes it to show up. But none that I can get a resource view of show it. That's where Lucida Grande CE and CY come from. They and the "normal" Lucida Grande are actually all the same font. The CE and CY FOND entries point to the exact same set of glyphs.

I have yet to find where Tipo de letra del sistema Fina is hidden. It is a different font, though. If you type anything in Word and then switch between this font and Helvetica Neue Light, the kerning is slightly different. So while they are very similar, it's not the same font. Basically, just ignore that one. I wouldn't use it in any project.

Do the HelveticaNeueDeskInterface.ttc fonts appear in any other app, or only Office? Word in the only place Tipo de letra del sistema Fina appears for me.

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Answer 2

Daniel Holt2 Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 23, 2015 4:28 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Thanks for the reply. I'm using the newest version of Office 2011 (14.4.8). Word and Excel both show System Font Heavy, System Font Medium Italic P4, System Font Medium P4, System Font Regular, System Font Thin, and System Font UltraLight, and Tipo de letra del sistema Fina. PowerPoint shows all of the above except System Font Regular and Tipo de letra del sistema Fina. I haven't seen any of these show up in other applications but I haven't checked every possible app.

I don't plan on using any of these faces and think this is probably a harmless glitch but it bugs me because it's so weird.

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Answer 3

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,014 points

Feb 24, 2015 7:02 AM in response to Daniel Holt2

That's weird. Of the ten fonts in the the HelveticaNeueDeskInterface.ttc package, seven have the family name, System Font . The other three are .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface . At least Office is smart enough not to show the three that have a family name that begins with a period. Though it shouldn't be showing any of them.

However, it's also not a real surprise. At this point, it's a four and half year old suite that does a few strange things. It still basically works despite appearing about the same time Lion did in late 2010. I occasionally see fonts that won't appear correctly in Word (such as the italic face will not show in the font lists), but that same font works correctly everywhere else.

As you mention though, it's harmless. Late this year, Microsoft plans to release Office 2015 (or 2016, whichever name they decide on) for Windows and Mac simultaneously, so Mac users will finally get an upgraded suite.

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