Office 2004 corupt font issue

[google]

Hey folks, this is my first post and a last desperate attempt to get
Office 2004 to work properly on my machine. I searched a bit to see if
this issue has been addressed but couldn't find anything.

First a little background: I have a 1.8ghz [dual processor] G5 running
10.4.3 and I have been running Office X without any issues. I bought
Office 2004 Standard edition [upgrade] to keep everything current on my
machine. I'm a freelance art director/graphic designer so keeping
current usually makes my life easier.

Currently I use Font Book as my font manager. This is my work machine,
I don't have any games or other freak programs installed.

Installation seemed to go fine. I entered my key, it searched and found
the previous version's info and the installation went without a
hitch. When I went to open word for the first time I got these
continual messages saying that my fonts were corrupt. I called MS
support twice they had me throw out preferences, rename my font folder,
verify and repair my permissions and nothing seemed to work. Like I
mentioned before, I'm a graphics guy so I have quite a few fonts.
They are all stored in a separate folder in my documents folder. I
ended up stripping out all but the system fonts and a few fonts
installed by MS and Quark. Still had the same problem. I've
un-installed the program and reinstalled it with no effect. With the
limited number of open fonts, I can click through the corrupt font
warnings and the program finally opens fine. I can close it, restart
the machine and it opens fine until I install another font and the
whole issue starts up again.

Oh, and I also installed the MS update offered off Mactopia.

This is getting on my nerves. I don't believe that every font is
corrupt; they work fine on every other program including Office X and
as read on, there is more evidence that the font's seem to be good.

One other thing that is happening, I'm not sure it's related [other
than it's driving me nuts], but Entourage opens, gathers all the info
from the previous version except for the last three weeks of incoming
mail [go figure].

Now here is where things get interesting. I have only one user on my
machine, that's me. So I try an experiment and create a new user
account. I log off my account, create and log into the new account. I
open word and everything is as it should be. So I need to mess with the
fonts. Considering all my personal fonts are in my documents file under
my old account, I grab a CD with fonts and install them into a folder
under the documents folder in the new user account. I go to font book,
install a token font, and open word up again. Everything is good, no
corrupt message. Now I'm baffled. I guess there is something in my
other profile that is causing this [these] issue. I guess I could go
through all the work to transfer all my files to the new user account
but this still doesn't explain the problem.

Anyone have any ideas? MS support couldn't offer any other solutions
other than a phone number to get my money back. Although I've read
about a few other folks with similar issues in the apple forums, I
haven't found anything that completely resolves this issue. Anyone
got a miracle?

-jeffrey

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Installation seemed to go fine. I entered my key, it searched and found
the previous version's info and the installation went without a
hitch. When I went to open word for the first time I got these
continual messages saying that my fonts were corrupt. I called MS
support twice they had me throw out preferences, rename my font folder,
verify and repair my permissions and nothing seemed to work. Like I
mentioned before, I'm a graphics guy so I have quite a few fonts.

Did you try validating the Fonts with Font Book ??? THat can help
identifying the corrupted ones.
There are a couple of additional things you can do:
- trash teh Office font cache from ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
- use an app like Onyx to trash all system and user font cache (then
reboot immediately)

They are all stored in a separate folder in my documents folder.

??? Document folder ??? You mean they are not in the standard locations
??

I
ended up stripping out all but the system fonts and a few fonts
installed by MS and Quark. Still had the same problem. I've
un-installed the program and reinstalled it with no effect. With the
limited number of open fonts, I can click through the corrupt font
warnings and the program finally opens fine. I can close it, restart
the machine and it opens fine until I install another font and the
whole issue starts up again.

Oh, and I also installed the MS update offered off Mactopia.

You can still use the FOnt Book to activate/deactivate fonts by batch to
identify the one that has the corruption (assuming of course it's not a
font cache issue).

This is getting on my nerves. I don't believe that every font is
corrupt; they work fine on every other program including Office X and
as read on, there is more evidence that the font's seem to be good.
[...]
Now here is where things get interesting. I have only one user on my
machine, that's me. So I try an experiment and create a new user
account. I log off my account, create and log into the new account. I
open word and everything is as it should be. So I need to mess with the
fonts.

It could still be "user font cache".


Corentin

 

[Charlie]

Hey Jeff/Corentin,

I've just read through this and realised I have the same problem. I'm
also a Graphic Designer and Art editor. I'm using a new G5 Quad with
Office 2004, lots of fonts and the usual applications. [Incidentally,
the fonts work fine in InDesign/Illustrator, etc.] My previous machine
was a G4 PowerBook, which ran Office 2004 fine.

Firstly, I logged on using a 'new user' and at first attempt, Word
opened fine.

This is what I did next:

1. Assuming a font problem, while in 'new user', I copied all the fonts
in both library folders onto an external HD.
2. I then logged back into my (administrator) account to copy them to
my library/fonts folders.
3. Verified ALL fonts using FontBook. Everyone passed as OK.
4. Deleted the font cache in Office preferences.
5. Ran permissions and logged back into the 'new user' account.
6. Did nothing but start up Word. This time I got the exact same error
message as on my administrator account ["... this font is corrupt..."].

Now, I'm stumped. I also tried Powerpoint and Excel... both came up
with the same error message.

Does anyone - even, dare I say it, at Microsoft - have a solution for
this frustrating problem. It is driving me insane too...!?

 

[J Sable Cantus]

We encountered a similar font-corruption issue here in our student labs. We
have many applications installed that require use of the font folders
including Adobe CS, Macromedia Studio, and of course Office 2004. We were
unable to find the exact cause but disabling Virex seemed to cause the error
to cease. Further I upgraded the machines to Virex 7.7 and have not had the
same issue since. This issue has been greatly troubling as Office does not
appear to handle the font folder the same as other applications. However,
once our student image was working consistently we just dropped the issue.
A real solution would be nice though.

Sable
SIE
Cal State University, Los Angeles

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

This is what I did next:

1. Assuming a font problem, while in 'new user', I copied all the fonts
in both library folders onto an external HD.
2. I then logged back into my (administrator) account to copy them to
my library/fonts folders.
3. Verified ALL fonts using FontBook. Everyone passed as OK.
4. Deleted the font cache in Office preferences.
5. Ran permissions and logged back into the 'new user' account.
6. Did nothing but start up Word. This time I got the exact same error
message as on my administrator account ["... this font is corrupt..."].

Now, I'm stumped. I also tried Powerpoint and Excel... both came up
with the same error message.

I see two options then:
- Some fonts are corrupted and FontBook fail to detect it (it is a
rather basic app after all). You can try the demo version of FontDoctor
to see if one of the fonts is indeed in bad shape.
- As Sable mentioned in the other post, you might be using some version
of Virex that's not behaving well...

Corentin

 

[daveosu84]

I have tried every fix I can find on the web.
None seems to work.

My Word works fine, but every time I try to open PowerPoint,
it says that all my fonts are corrupt and shuts down.

So far, Apple and Microsoft seem oblivious to the problem.

 

[daveosu84]

I have tried every fix I can find on the web.
None seems to work.

My Word works fine, but every time I try to open PowerPoint,
it says that all my fonts are corrupt and shuts down.

So far, Apple and Microsoft seem oblivious to the problem.

 

[daveosu84]

I have tried every fix I can find on the web.
None seems to work.

My Word works fine, but every time I try to open PowerPoint,
it says that all my fonts are corrupt and shuts down.

So far, Apple and Microsoft seem oblivious to the problem.

I never had a problem until I upgraded to Tiger.

 

[Oddvar Paulsen]

Hello,
I am living in Norway, and have exactly the same problem; Word and
PowerPoint. I think I am turning crazy, because I use Word daily. I think
I´ve got 1000s of new grey hairs. At a moment I uninstalled 2004, and
installed the X-version. Now I tried again. Please MS & Apple, fix it up!
Anyway, I thought I was the only one in the world with this mess.
And it is not turning to be better if more people have the same "kick" every
time you open the "excellent" Office for MAC.

Oddvar Paulsen
Kristiansand
Norway

Daiya Mitchell skrev:

 

[Kyle]

I had this problem once, but I didn't use this solution, so I don't
know if it works. But, here goes:
"The culprit was Apple's system level font cache, which caches fonts by
user. Deleting /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/(uid)/, where (uid) is my
user id (just check with get info if you don't know your id - yours is
the one you own) solved the problem."

 

[metasteve]

http://www.openoffice.org/

I had this problem once, but I didn't use this solution, so I don't
know if it works. But, here goes:
"The culprit was Apple's system level font cache, which caches fonts by
user. Deleting /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/(uid)/, where (uid) is my
user id (just check with get info if you don't know your id - yours is
the one you own) solved the problem."

 

[metasteve]

Thanks, Kyle... THIS SEEMS TO HAVE WORKED!!! Deleting the files in this
folder, then logging out and back it worked. But now I cannot emptyy
the trash... but at least I can use Excel. In the meantime I HAVE been
using Neo Office (an Open Office built. It works great and is faster.
Not as many "features" as MS.

 

[toa]

Hello:
Here in Mexico got the same problem. G5Quad with 10.4.4. This issue
drove me crazy!!! resulting in a smashed microsoft office 2004 box!!!
But tried the solution of Kyle and it worked fine. I deleted
/library/caches/com.apple.ats/system/fonts.db
and deleted all the contents of the other folder which in my computer
was /library/caches/com.apple.ats/501/.
The solution worked, the folders were reestablished... and I had to put
a Office 2004 in a brand new box.

Pedro

 

[toa]

Hello again:
Miss saying that after deleting files I reinitialized the computer.

Pedro