Office 2004 fonts are corrupt...

[tom.lauranzano]

Hello--I have a user who has a G5 with 10.3.9 and all pertinant
updates installed. He is using a valid upgrade copy of Office 2k4.
Lately, whenever he attempts to open any office app he gets an error
saying his font is corrupt or missing, then the errors continue down
the entire list of 70 something fonts within Office. He has to do a
Force Quit because the apps never open.

Can I just copy out the fonts from the CD and replace them?

When I loaded the CD there doesn't seem to be any "detect and repair"
options a la Win O2k3...

I suppose I can just reinstall O2K4 (over itself?) but if there's a
quicker fix, then I'm all for that. Obviusly I'm a newbie when it
comes to MAC support--apologies for my ignorance.

Thanks for your time.

Tom

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

There's a known bug that fits that description exactly, but it's only
been tied to Tiger thus far, except for one report of 10.3.9. You might
be #2.

See here for explanation and potential fixes--my guess is something
there would work.
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/CorruptFontErrors.html

There are no Detect and Repair features. Re-installing, however, should
never be the first step with the Mac or Mac apps.

Fonts on the mac are a minefield, though, and I never figured them out,
so I won't speak to whether switching out the CD versions is
theoretically fine. I don't think it's the best step for what you report
anyhow.

 

[Diane Ross]

Hello--I have a user who has a G5 with 10.3.9 and all pertinant
updates installed. He is using a valid upgrade copy of Office 2k4.
Lately, whenever he attempts to open any office app he gets an error
saying his font is corrupt or missing, then the errors continue down
the entire list of 70 something fonts within Office. He has to do a
Force Quit because the apps never open.

Can I just copy out the fonts from the CD and replace them?

Yes, but it would probably be easier to use "Remove Office" then install
Office from the CD.

The fonts in /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts/ were put
there by the CD Installer to act as a source, backup and repair. They're not
used directly by Office. At the first launch of an Office application they
are copied to ~/Library/Fonts/, replacing any older versions put there by
earlier versions of Office. These are the fonts used by Office and other
applications

The general method of OS X is to look first in your user folder, here
~/Library/Fonts/ . If there happens to be a particular font there, it
overrides any version that may be in /Library/Fonts/ or
/System/Library/Fonts/ - it doesn't even look there for those. In most
cases, once it's done with the user Library, it then looks in
/Library/Fonts/ for any fonts not already found in ~/. Only these fonts from
/Library will appear in the fonts lists. On OS X, most well-behaved
applications installing fonts will do so in ~/Library, since OS X is a
multi-user environment. You or your administrator might choose /Library, but
it will simply get overruled by any user installation of the same fonts.
However, if a user should trash his own fonts, the /Library version will
then come into play. (And it may be that the admin won't let individual
users have permission to remove those.) Finally, if no version of a font
exists in either user or local location the default version in
/System/Library/Fonts will take over. And those can't (i.e. shouldn't - and
don't try) be removed. The system can access these versions as it wishes,
and won't be overruled by other versions of those fonts you might have in
the other Fonts folders which take precedence in other circumstances.

"Remove Office"

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/install/remove_office.html>

See these pages for more info.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html>

<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Disable-Fonts.html>
--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>