Font styles lost in Word 11.5.6

[Zack]

Hi all -

I just updated my copy of Word 2004 to Word 11.5.6. I'm now, for the
first time, having a weird problems with font formats. When I view a
document (new or saved, makes no difference) in either normal or page
preview views, the various font formats (italic, underline, bold, etc)
fail to display. They display properly in print preview, and they
print properly. Interestingly, if I select italic in either normal or
page preview views, the cursor slants appropriately but the actual
text displays as normal.

I upgraded to OS 10.6.2 from 10.6.1 a few days ago. I suppose it's
just possible that the problem was caused by the system upgrade -- I
can't swear that I tried to type anything that contained italic/bold/
underlining in the several days before doing the system upgrade and
the office upgrade.

Is this a bug that other people are experiencing, and if not any
guesses on how to fix it?

Zack (OS10.6.2, Early 2009 Mac Mini)

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Zack;

When is the last time you repaired disk permissions & shut down your Mac
[not a Restart]?

Give that a try first... wait 1-2 minutes before starting up again.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Zack:

Sounds like Word has lost connection to the printer.

That's the indication you get when Word is configured to print to a generic
text-only printer.

Word retrieves the printing characteristics from the printer driver to
determine which font attributes the printer is capable of. If it can't find
the printer, it assumes "none" and shows you the default "Draft Font".

Cheers

Hi all -

I just updated my copy of Word 2004 to Word 11.5.6. I'm now, for the
first time, having a weird problems with font formats. When I view a
document (new or saved, makes no difference) in either normal or page
preview views, the various font formats (italic, underline, bold, etc)
fail to display. They display properly in print preview, and they
print properly. Interestingly, if I select italic in either normal or
page preview views, the cursor slants appropriately but the actual
text displays as normal.

I upgraded to OS 10.6.2 from 10.6.1 a few days ago. I suppose it's
just possible that the problem was caused by the system upgrade -- I
can't swear that I tried to type anything that contained italic/bold/
underlining in the several days before doing the system upgrade and
the office upgrade.

Is this a bug that other people are experiencing, and if not any
guesses on how to fix it?

Zack (OS10.6.2, Early 2009 Mac Mini)

--

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Zack]

Sounds like Word has lost connection to the printer.

That's the indication you get when Word is configured to print to a generic
text-only printer.

Word retrieves the printing characteristics from the printer driver to
determine which font attributes the printer is capable of.  If it can'tfind
the printer, it assumes "none" and shows you the default "Draft Font".

Thanks for the replies! If "Word has lost connection to the printer,"
how would I fix that? Note that the font itself (courier, helvetica
etc) displays correctly; it's just the font formatting (italic, bold)
that does not display. When I go to print, the correct (and only
printer) is shown in the print dialog box, and the actual hard copy
print is fine.

Oddly enough, and contrary to what I wrote in my original post,
underlining DOES display correctly.

I repair permissions routinely (last time was two days ago), and turn
off my computer (and the power strip into which it and all related
accessories are plugged into to) every night.

Thanks,
Zack

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Zack;

I'm headed a different direction than John... My reasoning being that if it
were a printer connection issue Print Preview would not render properly nor
would you be able to print -- at least not effectively. I'm seeing it more
as a probable font issue. Does it occur if you run Word from a different
User Account?

Run Apple's Font Book app to Resolve Duplicates & to Validate Fonts. The
instructions for each are in the program's Help if you aren't familiar with
it -- neither is a complicated task. You may also need to delete a file by
the name of Office Font Cache (11) which is located in the directory:

Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/

Be certain no Office apps are running when you delete the file & empty the
Trash. It will take Word a moment extra to launch while it rebuilds the
cache file.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

I agree with Bob:

If it were a printer connection issue, underlining would not be there.

I suspect what has happened is that you have upgraded to OS 10.6 but
migrated your old fonts back into the new system. If you have, the bold and
italic faces won't be there.

Try this:

1) Change Helvetica for Calibri

2) Change Courier for Consolas

Does it come right?

Calibri and Consolas are the modern Unicode equivalents for Arial and
Courier. Calibri is a little lighter than Helvetica, Consolas is tighter
and less fussy than Courier.

Both are designed for modern documents that appear on screen more often than
they appear on paper. And both have a full set of faces in the font
suitcase.

If you want to fix this, I believe that you will need to remove the old
copies of Helvetica and Courier from your system so that the new OS 10.6
versions can appear.

Hope this helps

Mactopia is currently broken: the helpers are not seeing any of the
questions being posted. Microsoft is working on the problem. In the
meantime:

To successfully post in here, either use Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word?lnk=

Or Microsoft Communities:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=micros
oft.public.mac.office.word&cat=en_US_3cf8ecf1-ca81-4391-b07d-8933029ee8a9&la
ng=en&cr=US

Or in Entourage, use the pre-configured Microsoft News server:
See "setting up Entourage for Newsreading" here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/AccessNewsgroups.html

Hi Zack;

I'm headed a different direction than John... My reasoning being that if it
were a printer connection issue Print Preview would not render properly nor
would you be able to print -- at least not effectively. I'm seeing it more
as a probable font issue. Does it occur if you run Word from a different
User Account?

Run Apple's Font Book app to Resolve Duplicates & to Validate Fonts. The
instructions for each are in the program's Help if you aren't familiar with
it -- neither is a complicated task. You may also need to delete a file by
the name of Office Font Cache (11) which is located in the directory:

Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/

Be certain no Office apps are running when you delete the file & empty the
Trash. It will take Word a moment extra to launch while it rebuilds the
cache file.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

--

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Zack]

Ok. A little bit of progress. I followed John's suggestion, and
replaced courier with Consolas. Yup, the problem disappeared, and
both italic and bold displayed properly on my screen.

I then followed Cbertaz's advice, and checked the fonts out with Font
Book. Unfortunately, Font Book said that Courier is NOT duplicated,
and the font validated fine. I tried trashing the Office Font Cache
(11) file, but this did not help - the problem with Courier not
displaying italic and bold remains. I could try using Font Book to
remove the font, but since it is apparently NOT duplicated I assume I
would have to reinstall it, and I don't know exactly how to do this or
where I would get the font from (my OS 10.6 installation disc? My
Office 2004 installation disc?).

UPDATE: Now things are getting weird. Courier will display bold and
italic properly if I set "zoom" to certain magnifcations. If "zoom"
is set to 108 percent or above, bold and italic display. If bold is
set between 100 and 107 percent, they don't display. Between 91 and
99 percent they do display. 90 percent and lower, they don't
display.Very strange. All I know is that in the past I've done almost
all my work in courier viewed at 100 percent, and italic and bold have
always displayed properly.

Further advice appreciated!

Best,
Zack

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Zack:

OK: NOW we're getting somewhere

The issue is with Aliasing... Font smoothing, to give it another name.

In System Preferences, look up "Font Smoothing". You will find it on the
Appearance tab.

I have "Use LCD Font smoothing" turned on, because I am using a Dell LCD. I
have "Turn off for sizes smaller than" set to 4pts because I have a
high-resolution monitor.

You may want to play with those settings. You will probably need to restart
the computer for a change to take effect.

Why just that one font? I wonder if it is a REALLY old bitmap font? Do a
"Get Info" on the Font File... Mine is Monotype Courier New version 5.00.2x
from 2008.

I have four files in the set: Courier New, Courier New Bold, Courier New
Italic and Courier New Bold Italic. All TTF (TrueType Fonts).

Check the version and date on your Courier files. If it's one of the old
"Courier" fonts, as opposed to "Courier New", the font indeed may have no
information coded into it to control what happens when displayed by OS 10.6
on a modern high-res monitor.

In which case, you should hunt around on your OS 10.6 DVD for the new
version of that font and replace it.

Hope this helps

--

Mactopia is currently broken: the helpers are not seeing any of the
questions being posted. Microsoft is working on the problem. In the
meantime:

To successfully post in here, either use Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word?lnk=

Or Microsoft Communities:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=micros
oft.public.mac.office.word&cat=en_US_3cf8ecf1-ca81-4391-b07d-8933029ee8a9&la
ng=en&cr=US

Or in Entourage, use the pre-configured Microsoft News server:
See "setting up Entourage for Newsreading" here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/AccessNewsgroups.html

Ok. A little bit of progress. I followed John's suggestion, and
replaced courier with Consolas. Yup, the problem disappeared, and
both italic and bold displayed properly on my screen.

I then followed Cbertaz's advice, and checked the fonts out with Font
Book. Unfortunately, Font Book said that Courier is NOT duplicated,
and the font validated fine. I tried trashing the Office Font Cache
(11) file, but this did not help - the problem with Courier not
displaying italic and bold remains. I could try using Font Book to
remove the font, but since it is apparently NOT duplicated I assume I
would have to reinstall it, and I don't know exactly how to do this or
where I would get the font from (my OS 10.6 installation disc? My
Office 2004 installation disc?).

UPDATE: Now things are getting weird. Courier will display bold and
italic properly if I set "zoom" to certain magnifcations. If "zoom"
is set to 108 percent or above, bold and italic display. If bold is
set between 100 and 107 percent, they don't display. Between 91 and
99 percent they do display. 90 percent and lower, they don't
display.Very strange. All I know is that in the past I've done almost
all my work in courier viewed at 100 percent, and italic and bold have
always displayed properly.

Further advice appreciated!

Best,
Zack

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Zack]

Whew! Font Smoothing did the trick! I had it turned off, since when
running Panther (which I did up until a few months ago) turning it on
made some of the system fonts on viewed on my old Apple 15" LCD
monitor look funky. Turning it back on did in fact solve the problem
(why this is a problem that became visible only after the recent
update of Word 2004 - or possibly after the update from 10.6.1 to
10.6.2 - I have no idea).

Incidentally, my courier font is apparently up to date. Get info says
it the version in my system library (presumably the only one I have,
since font book says there are no duplicates) is 6.1d5e1, created
7/16/09,

Thanks so much for everyone's help!

Zack

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Zack:

Got it at last

I suspect this problem becomes visible only at very specific zoom levels:
for example, that it will show at 91 per cent but not 92%.

When the stroke weight of a character in pixels is not an exact multiple of
the monitor resolution, and font smoothing is off, you will get these
"artefacts".

Fortunately, your description of the problem was accurate enough for us to
be able to recognise the cause

Cheers

Whew! Font Smoothing did the trick! I had it turned off, since when
running Panther (which I did up until a few months ago) turning it on
made some of the system fonts on viewed on my old Apple 15" LCD
monitor look funky. Turning it back on did in fact solve the problem
(why this is a problem that became visible only after the recent
update of Word 2004 - or possibly after the update from 10.6.1 to
10.6.2 - I have no idea).

Incidentally, my courier font is apparently up to date. Get info says
it the version in my system library (presumably the only one I have,
since font book says there are no duplicates) is 6.1d5e1, created
7/16/09,

Thanks so much for everyone's help!

Zack

--

Mactopia is currently broken: the helpers are not seeing any of the
questions being posted. Microsoft is working on the problem. In the
meantime:

To successfully post in here, either use Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word?lnk=

Or Microsoft Communities:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=micros
oft.public.mac.office.word&cat=en_US_3cf8ecf1-ca81-4391-b07d-8933029ee8a9&la
ng=en&cr=US

Or in Entourage, use the pre-configured Microsoft News server:
See "setting up Entourage for Newsreading" here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/AccessNewsgroups.html

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]