microsoft excel wants me to download STKaiti font

Agree with KiltedTim and dialabrain ... my quest was to understand if this was malware masquerading as an Excel call to action on the IOS version of Excel. But after reading here, I found FontBook and discovered that the 3 fonts for which I was seeing popups were legitimately not installed yet. So I've installed them and all seems fine so far. Thanks for your responses :-)

Its amazing how no problems are ever Apple problems. The issue didn't start until Apple OS Sierra. Obviously, something changed in that OS to cause the problem. Apple loves to play the blame game. I have the same issue and I have Excel 2011 upgraded to the latest version. No problems until after the OS Sierra upgrade. Excel continues to work fine on OS 10.11.6.

I also have this problem. It started with a font that needed an ~2 MB download (which I thought was a large file for a font but who am I to judge). When that had completed it immediately asked for another font for 6 MB. When that had completed it moved onto STKaiti for 65 MB!!!!! There is no way a font can require 65 MB. So I killed the download halfway through fearing that this is some kind of nasty software. I searched the web with the font name and found this thread. Please Apple tell me what is going on!

This is not a virus or malware. It is a result of the Sierra upgrade. Here is the solution:

Go to the search window and type "font book", and select the font book application. You can also find it under "Applications" in a finder window. Once your in the font book, select "all fonts" in the upper left of the window. Look at all of the fonts on the list that are grayed out. If they have "off" next to them, right click (two finger click) and select "enable font". If "off" does not appear next to the font name, right click (two finger click) and select "download font". This will solve the problem. What I found is that all of the missing fonts were asian language characters for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

This is not a virus or malware. It is a result of the Sierra upgrade. Here is the solution:

Go to the search window and type "font book", and select the font book application. You can also find it under "Applications" in a finder window. Once your in the font book, select "all fonts" in the upper left of the window. Look at all of the fonts on the list that are grayed out. If they have "off" next to them, right click (two finger click) and select "enable font". If "off" does not appear next to the font name, right click (two finger click) and select "download font". This will solve the problem. What I found is that all of the missing fonts were asian language characters for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

3 Who are you, exactly, who is replying to my post? Justifying Mac, but not helping at all.

He's not "justifying" anything. Tom is about the most knowledgable person I've ever come across when it comes to languages and font usage. He was a major contributor of information for the authors of this book and is mentioned in the book's Thank You page.

He's trying to help, but he can't make you listen.

4 Why are you posting in the El Capitan Forum if Sierra is so good?

Because he's capable of answering questions in more than one forum? Lots of long time users here help in multiple forums. It just depends on where you think you can use your expertise to help.

rod348 wrote:

2 I have tried working without automatic download and was told that my machine would stop working as all the apps needed the new system.

I don't know what you are referring to there, I cannot remember any time in recent years when that might have been necessary.

But if you rely on 3rd party apps, you should definitely go back to not allowing OS updates to be installed automatically. There is never any guarantee that the makers of Office or other 3rd party apps will have updated their products to work with a new MacOS version (and that is their responsibility, not Apple's). It is usually best to check these and the app makers' forums for other users' experiences before deciding to update yourself.

To let Apple know your views, best use the feedback channel (since in these forums you are only talking to other users like yourself):

http://www.apple.com/feedback

rod348 wrote:

1 PowerPoint, in my case, . . . advice as to how to get the download request turned off, or an assurance that, if I did download them, they are not viruses . . .

This is a user-to-user forum. What you've stated is specific to your computer as you acknowledged with "in my case." PowerPoint is a Microsoft application and as other users in this thread stated, the fonts the application is requesting are NOT viruses. The instructions provided to download the fonts using FontBook are as Apple instructs.

2 . . . On Friday Night Apple decided to download Sierra onto my computer without warning, and re-booted the machine without permission. . .

3 . . . This is not the first time that unwanted "upgrades" by Apple have ruined my work. . . I'll download the fonts if I must, but why is it constantly crashing?

The security update originally released on July 19, 2017. If you do not want automatic OS X updates nor security updates, you might want to check (and perhaps change) your App Store preferences in System Preferences. The choice is yours.

As for the crashes, what troubleshooting have you done? Consider copying your PowerPoint presentation doc to another location such as an external drive or cloud storage, and then restore your computer to the state before the security update from a good cloned backup or TimeMachine.

techsaavyfredster wrote:

I have the same issue ... since upgrading to Sierra OS. ... annoying. Please FIX ;-)

KiltedTim is correct of course but the obvious solution is to go ahead and download the fonts MS is looking for.

It is something Apple will likely need to address as its not just Microsoft programs but Adobe programs. If 3rd party developers can suppress the error message, then they don't know how to do it. It started with Sierra and has persisted with each update. I know Apple doesn't read these boards but I'm going to submit through the Apple Dev bug submission as there shouldn't be a need for applications to say that specific localization fonts are required. These aren't in use and the alert is unnecessary.

FWIW, some problems are Apple problems. However, it's up to developers to update their software to work with any changes in the OS in order to work correctly with any changes to the OS. Not the other way around. If they choose not to, that's on them.

You're right, Apple OS clearly breaks something with the fonts for a major set of programs that the vast majority of users use, but it should be on Microsoft to fix it. Apple holds no responsibility there. Is the font missing a microsoft font or did Apple remove it? If they removed the font, seems like that could be there problem. Since the problem didn't happen until the Sierra upgrade, it would seem that Apple removed the font and they need to address the issue, not someone else. Since the problem doesn't occur in previous versions of the OS, it would seem to point towards Apple making a change that caused the issue.

Go to the search window and type "font book", and select the font book application. You can also find it under "Applications" in a finder window. Once your in the font book, select "all fonts" in the upper left of the window. Look at all of the fonts on the list that are grayed out. If they have "off" next to them, right click (two finger click) and select "enable font". If "off" does not appear next to the font name, right click (two finger click) and select "download font". This will solve the problem. What I found is that all of the missing fonts were asian language characters for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

This also does not help. After the next reboot the respective fonts are deactivated again. So it's definitely an macOS sierra problem.

I'm using a FB client "Current". I'm seeing far too many download requests to feel comfortable. The names of the fonts all look like something with asian origin? Every time I skip the request I get another different one. Something aside from OS upgrades is going on and with the number of them popping up I don't think this is right. Maybe 3 fonts but not more than 10.

TedShredz wrote:

I'm using a FB client "Current". I'm seeing far too many download requests to feel comfortable.

Contact the people who make that app or its support forum to see if others using that app have similar experiences.

MacOS does come with over 2 dozen fonts for Chinese/Japanese/Korean.