Does Word 2004 use its own fonts?

[Jeff Wiseman]

I have a G5 iMac with OS 10.3.6 running Office with all the
current upgrades. I'm curious as to why Office seems to have its
own personal set of fonts. Furthermore, they seem to be redundant
to those installed with the Mac OS X.

The ones I'm talking about are located in the "Macintosh
HD/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts" folder. Isn't
Word (or the rest of Microsoft Office for that matter) using the
fonts installed in the /System/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, and
~/Library/Fonts area?

I'm new to the newsgroup and using Word on the Mac and couldn't
find anything about this.

- Jeff

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Most of them can be removed, but a few of them, such as TNR, Verdana,
and Wingdings are fairly essential to Word's operation in one way or
another. I've discussed this problem in detail here (so check the
archives) and in my Take Control ebook on Word 2004. m.

Thanks for that info Matt. I'm trying as best I can to come up to
speed on these things.

Per your suggestion, I've spent a couple hours on Google checking
out back threads on m.p.m.o.word and if I understand correctly,
installing office puts the same set of fonts in three places,
/Library/Fonts, ~/Library/Fonts, and in the application-office
fonts area. The Office fonts below the actual Microsoft Office
2004 folder seem to be held and used as the source for updating
the other areas in some automatic way but when the Office
applications run, they only use the normal Library/Font
collections as all other Mac apps would.

- Jeff

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Thanks for that info Matt. I'm trying as best I can to come up to speed
on these things.

Per your suggestion, I've spent a couple hours on Google checking out
back threads on m.p.m.o.word and if I understand correctly, installing
office puts the same set of fonts in three places, /Library/Fonts,
~/Library/Fonts, and in the application-office fonts area. The Office
fonts below the actual Microsoft Office 2004 folder seem to be held and
used as the source for updating the other areas in some automatic way
but when the Office applications run, they only use the normal
Library/Font collections as all other Mac apps would.

Well, already I've found I'm mistaking in that a paper produced
by Apple on "Using and Managing Fonts in Mac OS X", they state
that the first place looked for for fonts is in the running
application's fonts folder (if it has one). If this is true then
The Office installer doesn't need to put the Office fonts in
either of the /Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts folders.

This is a real irritation. It's difficult going through trying to
find which was the original fonts that you had in the Librarys
before the installer slams different ones with the same names on
top of them.

Can the font book utility really pick up each of the individual
application's font collections that may exist in their
applicatoin font folders?

- Jeff

 

[tbatst]

I'm watching this thread with interest. I'd, too, like to know the
skinny on font management not only in Word, but OSX in general. In
particular:

1. I read somewhere that the easiest way to handle fonts (and remove
any duplicates) is to move them all into one Fonts folder. I forget
which one, but I think it's HD root level Library/Fonts folder. Anyone
know if that's true?

2. In searching my drive for folders named Fonts, I find that Adobe
likes to create its own Fonts folders. Does Adobe also read fonts from
the above Libary/Fonts folder? If so, I'd like to remove all those
duplicate fonts.

3. Anyone know of a way to shorten Word's font list? I'd love it if I
could get Word (2004) to recognize only about 6 different fonts in any
template that I use. Currently, it shows over 80, and that's too many.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

I'm watching this thread with interest. I'd, too, like to know the
skinny on font management not only in Word, but OSX in general. In
particular:

I'm still learning too but I might have a thought or two on your
questions:

1. I read somewhere that the easiest way to handle fonts (and remove
any duplicates) is to move them all into one Fonts folder. I forget
which one, but I think it's HD root level Library/Fonts folder. Anyone
know if that's true?

Don't muck with the Macintosh HD/System/Library/Fonts folder. Its
primarily there for system needed fonts. If you don't want them
showing up in menus, you can disable them from the Font Book utility.

Macintosh HD/Library/Fonts folder is the "fonts for everyone"
place. Different users logged in will all see these fonts (as
well as the ones mentioned just above).

If you have some experiment fonts that you want to try, put them
into your personal ~/Library/Fonts folder. Only you will be able
to see them. Other will not see them when they are logged in.

The Font Book utility allows you to enable or disable individual
fonts from all three of the above areas. The settings that you
make in the utility are unique to you as well. The next person to
log in will see only his own font enabling/disablings.

When you see duplicates in the Font Book, by puttin the cursor
over the font and letting it sit for a moment, the little message
that pops up will show you which location that particular font is
located at--real handy!

2. In searching my drive for folders named Fonts, I find that Adobe
likes to create its own Fonts folders. Does Adobe also read fonts from
the above Libary/Fonts folder? If so, I'd like to remove all those
duplicate fonts.

This throws me a bit. Apple's doucment says that the first place
fonts are looked for is the application's Font folder. If this is
true then I'm not sure it is the OS doing it. For example, it
seems that the Font folder for the Office 2004 applications seems
to be only a holding place for the fonts until the apps decide to
install them into either or both of /Library/Fonts and
~/Library/Fonts. However, I am uncertain what would happen if I
stripped them all out of those places and then tried running
something like Word 2004. I'm guessing it would again try to
reinstall them but that is only a guess.

How Adobe uses it's folder again may be application
specific--this is one thing I'd like to know.

3. Anyone know of a way to shorten Word's font list? I'd love it if I
could get Word (2004) to recognize only about 6 different fonts in any
template that I use. Currently, it shows over 80, and that's too many.

You can disable the fonts that Font Book sees which is primarily
those in the ...Library/Fonts folders. You can remove the fonts
from those folders as well. What to do about those in the
application area I don't know yet but it makes sense that if they
are not there, they can't be used. Also, I'm pretty sure that the
Font Book never looks into the application areas for fonts, only
in the ...Library/Fonts folders. If I am wrong, someone please
correct me!

Note though that all fonts are not made equal--some are mandatory
for the support of certain application. For example, the old Mac
systems all could not function properly if you were to remove
Geneva, etc.

Hope this helps some.

- Jeff