Where'd all my fonts go, Word?

April 6, 2012 1:27 PM

Just upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Suddenly Microsoft Office 2008 isn't seeing all 1900 of my fonts -- and some of the usual defaults are gone! What the hell happened and how can I fix it?

I did an upgrade in place, and when I open Font Book it clearly shows my 1900+ fonts, but when I go to Word and try to use things like Times New Roman and TW Cen MT, they're not available!

How do I fix this? I miss TW Cen MT, it's my favorite. :( A cursory Google search suggests there's a printer problem but I can't figure out where to find out if I have bad drivers now that I've upgraded my OS.

Office 2008 did not have this problem in 10.5.x.

posted by iLoveTheRain to computers & internet (9 answers total)

Sounds like your Office Font Cache got messed up. Try trashing the prefs and the cache and let Word rebuild it.
posted by birdherder at 1:46 PM on April 6, 2012

:( That didn't work. Thank you, though, birdherder!
posted by iLoveTheRain at 1:58 PM on April 6, 2012

From the site birdherder linked to: Office 2008 Fonts to delete after installing Snow Leopard has some more directions.
posted by zsazsa at 1:58 PM on April 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Apple made a change to the way fonts are handled in Snow Leopard. It doesn't appear to be available from Apple anymore. Here's a download page from MacUpdate.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:17 PM on April 6, 2012

I've seen this before: Apple got much stricter about OpenType compliance in 10.6.8, some fonts that skated by before (I'm looking at you Bookman) don't work reliably anymore. Thorzdad's update may work for you (I believe Apple took it down because they rolled it into 10.6.8) but you may be better off in the long run finding a proper OpenType replacement for you missing fonts.
posted by Oktober at 2:20 PM on April 6, 2012

It looks like I can't use that update Thorzdad, but I also am having this problem regardless of whether or not 10.6.8 had the update rolled into it.

So this problem probably won't be mitigated by an Office 2008 reinstall? Adobe and all the other programs on my computer are successfully able to read, render and write with all my different fonts.
posted by iLoveTheRain at 3:23 PM on April 6, 2012

You could certainly try an Office reinstall. I have Office 2008 on my SL iMac and can't recall ever having font issues like what you're describing.

Before you reinstall, though, it would be worth your while to go into FontBook and disable any/all duplicate fonts. There will be quite a few, too. In most cases, the versions installed by either Mac OS or your Adobe installs will be newer than the Office versions. I've disable almost all of my Office fonts in favor of the other versions.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:17 PM on April 6, 2012

Alas, nothing has worked. I've cleared caches multiple times, I've consolidated all my fonts, and I've tried looking for OpenType options but the only font family I want is TW Cen MT and to get OT versions of it will run me $300 apparently. Is there a free source for OT fonts? I just want:

TW Cen MT
TW Cen MT Bold

I am now having the same issue in Office 2011 after making a last ditch effort to install it in hopes that the issue would resolve itself. What is happening here?
posted by iLoveTheRain at 4:16 PM on April 8, 2012

OpenType fonts don't make a difference. :(
posted by iLoveTheRain at 4:26 PM on April 8, 2012