How do I remove the below font virus/malware?
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
TThe reason u got this malware us because u downloaded stuff from third party webdites. Don't download from there
4 replies
Why do you assume that just because something unexpected occurred, that it must be some sort of malware causing it? There are no viruses in OS X. None.
Are these fonts that came with OS X you're trying to use, or did you download them from somewhere else? Do you have other third party fonts installed?
Hi Kurt,
Thanks for pointing this out - I had a friend do the same!
How this occurred was I installed Office:Mac and after doing so the installation has somehow affected my fonts across all txt documents.
Even when I open a saved document, if it was written in Arial, Times, Verdana etc, the whole document becomes skewed, like the example above.
I have since uninstalled Office:Mac and I am back to using OpenOffice Writer; however, and unfortunately, the issue still remains.
You sound like you know what you are talking about though - any suggestions on how to get my fonts back to normal?
Which version of Office for Mac? 2011 or the 2016 preview? If 2011, it installs a lot of fonts. It replaces many .ttf and .ttc fonts installed by OS X and moves them to a folder named Fonts Disabled. You can delete that entire folder if you like since neither the system or Office is using them.
What Office 2011 also installs though is a bunch of old OS 9 style TrueType suitcase fonts which do conflict with other installed fonts. Remove the following Mac legacy TrueType suitcase fonts from the /Library/Fonts/Microsoft/ folder:
Andale Mono
Arial Black
Arial Narrow
Arial Rounded Bold
Comic Sans MS
Georgia
Impact
Tahoma
Trebuchet MS
Note that they do not have any file extension, such as .ttf.
Next, use Font Book to move all third party fonts you many have installed out of the System and root Library Fonts folders. Launch Font Book and from the menu, choose Restore Standard Fonts. Next to each Fonts folder, the command will create a new folder named Fonts (Removed). Any fonts not installed by OS X will be moved to that folder (which will include a bunch of fonts installed by Office). You can put the subfolder of fonts Microsoft back into the root /Library/Fonts/ folder if you wish. You've already deleted the older OS 9 TrueType fonts, so the rest are okay to put back.
Lastly, create a new folder on the desktop. Open the Fonts folder in your user account and move any fonts you find there into the new folder on the desktop so that the user account Fonts folder is empty.
Now that all duplicate/conflicting fonts, and third party fonts have been moved or removed, you need to clean up the font caches and Font Book database.
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. Yosemite is a bit different. Whether it's a Safe Mode boot or a normal one, you get the same progress bar. It just takes longer to get to the desktop in Safe Mode. So hold the Shift key until you get to the desktop.
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, you need to clear all font cache files from the system.
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
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.
Test to see if the issue has been resolved.
How do I remove the below font virus/malware?