Q: Some MS Word fonts don't show up in Notes or Scrivener!
Hi all,
I'm running OS X El Capitan, and while I can see and use two of my favorite fonts, i.e., Garamond and Candara, on MS Word 2016 (15.19.1), these fonts, oddly enough, don't show up on other word processing apps such as TextEdit, Notes or Scrivener – previously on Yosemite, however, I was able to use these fonts with Scrivener. Since this strange behavior is not limited to a third party app (e.g., Scrivener) and Apple's own Notes and TextEdit don't show the fonts, I was wondering if this was a glitch or a copy right issue. In other words, with El Capitan, is it possible, or better still, logical that now I'm only allowed to use these fonts on MS Word, and not universally as before with Yosemite? Finally, is there a way for me to fix this issue?
Thanks.
Pooya
MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), MS Words and Scrivener
Posted on Mar 13, 2016 11:36 AM
The item I noted is only created if you add fonts to Font Book in the original manner. When you do, it copies the fonts you added to the Fonts folder in your user account, and creates the file com.apple.FontRegistry. If you only use the newer font collection option in Font Book to activate fonts in place, this file is not created.
Do not remove the file com.apple.FontRegistryUlAgent.plist (there are actually two of these in separate locations). Without it, the Mac will not boot. Not even in Safe Mode.
You can try these two steps to see if you can clear up font issues.
1) Startup in Safe Mode (restart and hold down the Shift key). When you get to the desktop, restart normally. Among other things, a Safe Mode startup will clear the Font Book database, and remove all cache files of the user account you boot into in Safe Mode.
2) 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 command removes all font cache files. Both for the system and the current logged in user account. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.
If after this you are still having problems, you may have conflicting third party fonts installed. Or, the OS itself may be damaged and require a reinstall. A somewhat simple way to test that (though not always definitive) is to create a new test account. Login into that and test. If the new account works as expected, then there's a problem somewhere in your normal account. If the new account also does not work, then it's a system wide issue of some kind.
Office 2016 installs over 200 font files within each application package. Only the Office 2016 apps can see them. That's why you can't find many of the fonts the Office apps list in the normal OS X Fonts folders.
Posted on Mar 13, 2016 1:40 PM