Font Book won't open

A couple of things to try.

Launch Disk Utility and repair permissioins.

Move the com.apple.FontBook.plist from ~/Library/Preferences (the ~ indicates your home folder) to the desktop, restart, and launch Font Book.

I also had this problem, most frustrating. In addition, Character Palette refuses to open. It shows the loading wheel and then disappears, reappears for a second, and then disappears, and it does this ad infinitum until I tell it to "Hide".

As I am a linguist and need access to many special charcters, these are serious problems. I will try the suggestions here, though I don't know that it will solve the palette problem.

Then, second phase would be to create a new admin user account, log into it, and launch Font Book. If it launches, then your original user account is the culprit.

If you get the same behavior, then it's probably time to consider doing an Archive & Install, saving user and network settings, installation. Either that or seeing if the problem exists on your bootable backup copy. If not, then erase the original and clone the backup back. No backup, then A&I.

Your choice.

I have the same problem. Was working with linotype fontexplorer X. Then one day when I started fontexplorer X the whole window was only "brushed metal" and most of my fonts not visible in applications. I updated fontexplorer, but still the same thing. Then I deinstalled it and tried to work with the font book and got the same problem you ve described.
I did a "Archive & Install, saving user and network settings, installation." but still not able to open font book (it openes quickly and closes again).

MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM

I just wanted to join the party. My font book is doing the same thing as Art's

Since a new account doesn't solve the issue, than corrupt fonts, and/or corrupt font cache files are the likely problems.

To reinstall all of OS X's fonts without having to reinstall the entire OS, follow the instructions at the bottom of my article, Font Management in Mac OS X Tiger and Panther.

To clear the font cache files, download and run Font Finagler. For Microsoft Office, you need to manually remove its two font cache files. The are located here. The tilde (~) represents your home folder.

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

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

Lastly, Font Book's database may also be damaged. Follow the steps in Undoing Font Book.

There are two common causes for Font Book crashing (or immediately quitting) upon launch.

The first problem is caused by a corrupt Font Collection file which causes an exception when Font Book tries to unarchive it. (You may also be unable to show the Font Panel in applications that use it). This problem is usually limited to a particular user account. To resolve it, go to your /Users/~/Library/FontCollections/ folder and remove any non-default .collection files there; you should be able to keep the following:

Chinese.collection
Classic.collection
Fixed Width.collection
Fun.collection
Japanese.collection
Korean.collection
Modern.collection
PDF.collection
Web.collection

"com.apple.Favorites.collection" and "com.apple.Recents.collection" are the two most common collections that can cause problems.

Another problem that usually results in Font Book quitting or crashing immediately on launch is caused by the fact that it's missing its "MainMenu.nib" interface file. If you open up the Console application (in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder) and look as you launch Font Book it should say something similar to the following:

<pre>2007-01-08 19:55:48 Font Book[3075] Unable to load nib file: MainMenu, exiting
2007-01-08 19:55:48 Font Book[3075] * +[NSFileManager closeCatalog]:
selector not recognized
2007-01-08 19:55:48 Font Book[3075] An uncaught exception was raised</pre>

To fix this problem, you'll need to get Pacifist to re-install the Font Book application from your OS X Tiger install disc. Then, you should download the latest version of the OS X Combo Update (currently OS X 10.4.8 Combo) and re-apply that over top of your existing OS X installation.

If your issue doesn't seem to be either of these, please post the contents of the crash log here...

Hope this helps....

Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 2.5 GB RAM; 17" MacBook Pro w/ 2 GB RAM - Mac OS X (10.4.8)

To fix the problem with the Character palette, find the following files, move them to the Desktop to disable them, and then try opening the character palette again:

/Users/~/Library/Caches/com.apple.CharPaletteCache.plist
/Users/~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.CharPaletteServer.plist

Hope this helps....

Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 2.5 GB RAM; 17" MacBook Pro w/ 2 GB RAM - Mac OS X (10.4.8)

markdouma- Many thanks m8. The method of using Pacifist to reinstall Font Book worked. I'm almost afraid to reinstall the 10.4.8 update again though as that is what caused the original crash.

Thanks for the help!

Rayzor30

Using Pacifist worked for me also. Thanks! Didn't re-install 10.4.8.