Office 2004 installs fonts on every account!!!???

[js]

Office 2004 has a set of own fonts, when a new user opens first time,
50M fonts are copied to ~user/Library/Fonts.
This stupid behavior leaves me with a lot of duplicate fonts on my
server, on every account.

Can I delete the application font folder and put them in /Libraty/Fonts
instead?


Joachim

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Yes, absolutely. But if you do that, beware of font conflicts and
overshadowing - a user who has his own Times New Roman in his own user
Library won't see the one in the top-level Library, and Word won't work
right. m.

Matt's right, of course. The best place is ~/Library/Fonts - the user Fonts
folder. That's where _everything_ looks first, and if a font is there, it
looks no further. And that's where MS Office copies its fonts to, so leave
them there. And it will do you absolutely no good to remove the
"application" font folder - i.e. the Fonts folder in Microsoft Office 2004
(or X) / Office folder. Office will just recreate it if you remove that one.
(That won't apply to most other applications.) And then it will re-copy them
to ~/Library/Fonts.

If you want to remove any fonts, you should remove the fonts in
/Library/Fonts/ if a version of the same font also exists in ~/Library/Fonts
- the user Fonts folder. Since the version in /Library/Fonts is not going to
be seen anyway, you can remove it (as long all users use at least one of the
Office applications) if you want.

Don't ever try to mess with /System/Library/Fonts/, even if you see
duplications there. That is just for the system's use, not yours. (You
couldn't remove anything anyway without expert Unix tricks, but don't try.)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Paul Berkowitz wrote:

Matt's right, of course. The best place is ~/Library/Fonts - the user Fonts
folder. That's where _everything_ looks first, and if a font is there, it
looks no further. And that's where MS Office copies its fonts to, so leave
them there. And it will do you absolutely no good to remove the
"application" font folder - i.e. the Fonts folder in Microsoft Office 2004
(or X) / Office folder. Office will just recreate it if you remove that one.
(That won't apply to most other applications.) And then it will re-copy them
to ~/Library/Fonts.

Why is it that it is no good to remove the application font
folder? How does Office recreate it if it is gone? Are these
suckers cached in yet ANOTHER place as well?

I thought that the application Fonts folder was essentially the
"source" of the MS fonts that automatically get placed in the
/Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts folders. If you don't have the
MS Office install disk inserted, where would Office get the fonts
from to replace what you removed from the Application font folder?

- Jeff

 

[Beth Rosengard]

In conjunction with Paul's advice below, learn how to use Font Book (in your
Applications folder). By expanding the arrow next to each font, you can see
how many variations you have installed, which are duplicates, and where they
are located.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Ben Borofka]

Matt's right, of course. The best place is ~/Library/Fonts - the user Fonts
folder. That's where _everything_ looks first, and if a font is there, it
looks no further. And that's where MS Office copies its fonts to, so leave
them there. And it will do you absolutely no good to remove the
"application" font folder - i.e. the Fonts folder in Microsoft Office 2004
(or X) / Office folder. Office will just recreate it if you remove that one.
(That won't apply to most other applications.) And then it will re-copy them
to ~/Library/Fonts.

Like someone else said, how? Where are these fonts created? Also, why
~/Library/Fonts a good place to put fonts? Wouldn¹t you want all your main
fonts in /Library/Fonts instead, so all users of the computer can use them?

If you want to remove any fonts, you should remove the fonts in
/Library/Fonts/ if a version of the same font also exists in ~/Library/Fonts
- the user Fonts folder. Since the version in /Library/Fonts is not going to
be seen anyway, you can remove it (as long all users use at least one of the
Office applications) if you want.

This makes no sense. If you ever create another user on your machine, he¹s
never going to be able to use those fonts. Why would you want anything in
~/Library/Fonts except for special fonts specific to that user (such as test
fonts)?

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Matt's right, of course. The best place is ~/Library/Fonts - the user Fonts
folder. That's where _everything_ looks first, and if a font is there, it

Unless, of course, you have other accounts on your system that
want to use the Office fonts, in which case they need to be in
the /Library/Fonts area

looks no further. And that's where MS Office copies its fonts to, so leave

I'm not sure this is exactly true. I'm not positive about this as
I've only done a single install when I was uncertain of what I
was doing, but I believe that in a multi-account system, the
files may be put into the /Library/Fonts area. Can anyone confirm
one way or the other for this?

them there. And it will do you absolutely no good to remove the
"application" font folder - i.e. the Fonts folder in Microsoft Office 2004
(or X) / Office folder. Office will just recreate it if you remove that one.

I'm having difficulty with believing this. If the font folder in
the Office application area is automatically recreated, it HAS to
get those fonts from a stash or archive somewhere on the system
since you do not have your Office install disk in the drive.
WHERE is that stash/archive located?

My guess is that the application fonts area IS the stash that
Office fonts are copied from to fill the Library/Font areas. Can
anyone confirm one way or the other for this item as well?

(That won't apply to most other applications.) And then it will re-copy them
to ~/Library/Fonts.

If you want to remove any fonts, you should remove the fonts in
/Library/Fonts/ if a version of the same font also exists in ~/Library/Fonts
- the user Fonts folder. Since the version in /Library/Fonts is not going to
be seen anyway, you can remove it (as long all users use at least one of the
Office applications) if you want.

I'm becoming convinced that a better way is to not remove them at
all but to control them with font groups in Font Book utility.

E.g., Assign all of the fonts in /Library/Fonts that were used by
offce in a font group called "Office Fonts", and all of the
original OS X fonts in that same folder assigned to a group
called "OS X fonts". Now when you are going to use Office to do
some work, you can disable the OS X group leaving only the Office
fonts enabled. Note that you do not include the fonts in
/System/Library/Fonts in the OS X group because in general they
(i.e., the system related fonts) should always be active.

If you want your Mac application fonts available in the Office
suite as well, create a group named something like "OSX-Office
duplicates" with only the Mac fonts that duplicate Office fonts
in the group. Leave the group turned off all the time.

Just some ideas how to avoid removing fonts from the system that
later on you might want.

Don't ever try to mess with /System/Library/Fonts/, even if you see
duplications there. That is just for the system's use, not yours. (You
couldn't remove anything anyway without expert Unix tricks, but don't try.)

I believe that you can get away with disabling some of the
foreign fonts in the System area. Note though that for a new
installation, the only duplicates I've normally seen with the
/System/Library/Fonts are in the /System Folder area (i.e.,
Classic--I forget the exact path). Since the classic fonts are
already grouped as "Classic" in the Font Book, it's a snap to
just disable the Classic set.

I do agree that the most you should ever do here is disable the
foriegn fonts you dont watch. Although you might be able to
remove them, I wouldn't bother. Leave them in the folder, just
disabled.

- Jeff

 

[matt neuburg]

Unless, of course, you have other accounts on your system that
want to use the Office fonts, in which case they need to be in
the /Library/Fonts area

No, because the moment someone starts up Office for the first time,
he'll get those fonts in his *own* ~/Library/Fonts area (whether they
are in the top-level /Library or not). m.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Like someone else said, how? Where are these fonts created? Also, why
~/Library/Fonts a good place to put fonts? Wouldn¹t you want all your main
fonts in /Library/Fonts instead, so all users of the computer can use them?
This makes no sense. If you ever create another user on your machine, he¹s
never going to be able to use those fonts. Why would you want anything in
~/Library/Fonts except for special fonts specific to that user (such as test
fonts)?

This is how things work:

1. Office's installation mechanism creates a Fonts folder within
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/ with all the fonts. If you
delete or remove any of these fonts, or the whole Fonts folder, launching
any Office app recreates the missing fonts. That's the "Repair" mechanism at
work.
2. Any time any user launches any Office app for the first time, all the
fonts in this /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts/ folder get
copied to the user's ~/Library/Fonts/ folder. That's the "First Run"
mechanism. You'll see "Optimizing fonts..." in the splash screen while
that's happening. If you create a new OS X user, that's what happens there
too. If you delete any of the Office fonts from there, they should just get
recreated again again the next time the user launches an Office app again.
3. Thus is how OS X likes it. The way OS X works, it looks first in
~/Library/Fonts/, If it finds the font it wants there, it never looks any
further. It doesn't matter whether there's any copy or version in
/Library/Fonts. It won't look there. And only if the font is in neither
location does it look in /System/Library/Fonts. So "reserve" system fonts
are always there and should never be tampered with.

OK. That means that some applications will install fonts in /Library/Fonts/
as a simple way of covering all users. But Office takes the more elaborate
procedure of installing fonts in every user's ~/Library/Fonts and checks
every time you launch an Office app from any user. That ensures that Office
always gets to use the Office version of the fonts. Since all these fonts in
question are Microsoft fonts, that's generally a good thing. But just
supposing you really wanted to replace an Office version with another
version, you could replace the copy in each ~/Library/Fonts. That would
work. But unless you really know what you're doing, don't do it. It will
mess up your Office documents.

Now it doesn't really matter what you do or don't do in /Library/Fonts with
copies of the same fonts as are in ~/Library/Fonts. Nothing will ever see
them there. They're not doing any harm, but you can delete them if you want.
(OK, in the unusual circumstance that there are some users on your computer
who do not have permission to use any Office app but might need these fonts
to use in TextEdit, say, then just leave the copies on /Library/Fonts be.)
There may be a number of non-MS fonts in there, which should be left alone
if not duplicated in ~.Library/Fonts.

The one exception to this rule is that it seems that, in some circumstances,
fonts in Classic (/System Folder/Fonts/) have been known to interfere and
cause crashes or other problems. So you might want to remove these, or -
better - use Font Book in Panther to disable all Classic fonts outside of
Classic apps.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

No, because the moment someone starts up Office for the first time,
he'll get those fonts in his *own* ~/Library/Fonts area (whether they
are in the top-level /Library or not). m.

I just now tried this out on 3 accounts and that is not what
happens for me. I have a single admin account and 3 standard
accounts on my G5 iMac running OS 10.3.6. I checked the
~/Library/Fonts directory on all accounts and none had anything
in them. I checked a new standard account that hadn't run Office
yet. No fonts in the home area. Ran Word and got the "optimizing
fonts" message. Checked again and still nothing existed in the
~/Library/Fonts folder.

I'm not saying that what you have stated is completely wrong,
only that there is obviously more to the story than that.

BTW, a difference between the first run of an admin account, a
standard account, and whether or not the system is set up with a
single account of multiples should all make a difference in how
automatic placement of fonts should work IMHO. Casual users don't
usually want to fool with font maintenance. That's why there are
common areas set up by admins so everyone has a similar look and
feel to their environment but power users can override those
areas by putting things in their own home environments if they
choose.

- Jeff

 

[matt neuburg]

I just now tried this out on 3 accounts and that is not what
happens for me. I have a single admin account and 3 standard
accounts on my G5 iMac running OS 10.3.6. I checked the
~/Library/Fonts directory on all accounts and none had anything
in them. I checked a new standard account that hadn't run Office
yet. No fonts in the home area. Ran Word and got the "optimizing
fonts" message. Checked again and still nothing existed in the
~/Library/Fonts folder.

I'm not saying that what you have stated is completely wrong,
only that there is obviously more to the story than that.

Well, if what you say is true, then I think you *should* say that what I
stated is completely wrong, because one counterexample is sufficient to
disprove the theorem!

However, my observation is correct for my part of the universe: on my
machine, and on all machines where I have ever installed Office 2004,
what I said *is* true. If you create a complete new user and run Word,
the 80MB of fonts are dumped into its Fonts folder (with a mighty
flourish - there's a dialog and progressbar, first thing).

I cannot account for the difference in our results. m.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I just now tried this out on 3 accounts and that is not what
happens for me. I have a single admin account and 3 standard
accounts on my G5 iMac running OS 10.3.6. I checked the
~/Library/Fonts directory on all accounts and none had anything
in them. I checked a new standard account that hadn't run Office
yet. No fonts in the home area. Ran Word and got the "optimizing
fonts" message. Checked again and still nothing existed in the
~/Library/Fonts folder.

Not my experience either. I just tried with a brand new user. Like Matt, I
got a dialog with a progress bar "Office is installing fonts onto your hard
disk." as I launched Word. And then there they all were in ~/Library/Fonts/:
all 77 MS fonts beginning with Abadi MT Condensed Bold and ending with
Wingdings 3. You have Office 2004? (Not that I think X did anything
different.)

The only difference would be that you already have all these fonts, in the
same versions, in /Library/Fonts/? Well, I'd be very surprised, but perhaps
Office looks in there in if ~/Library/Fonts/ is missing them, and if
/Library/Fonts/ already has the correct fonts in the correct versions
perhaps it leaves things be. As I say, I'd be surprised but perhaps that's
what happens. I'll ask MacBU and let you know if I get an answer.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

matt neuburg wrote:

Well, if what you say is true, then I think you *should* say that what I
stated is completely wrong, because one counterexample is sufficient to
disprove the theorem!

It may only be that the context of the theorem is too narrow. We
all want to know if that's the case

My father used to teach me that you should never be more than 95%
"sure". The minute you are, you'll discover the 5% that you were
wrong. I've yet to see an untrue example of this

Corollery is that you can never be even 95% sure of anything that
Microsoft sells. Sound Bitter? Well, I've lost an incredible
amount of time over the years due to bizzare surprizes and
inconsistant behaviors embedded in Microsoft software. It's the
rule rather than the exception.

However, my observation is correct for my part of the universe: on my
machine, and on all machines where I have ever installed Office 2004,
what I said *is* true. If you create a complete new user and run Word,
the 80MB of fonts are dumped into its Fonts folder (with a mighty
flourish - there's a dialog and progressbar, first thing).

I cannot account for the difference in our results. m.

I believe what you say is likely true. I think that Paul has hit
on something in his response to my last note.

- Jeff

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Not my experience either. I just tried with a brand new user. Like Matt, I
got a dialog with a progress bar "Office is installing fonts onto your hard
disk." as I launched Word. And then there they all were in ~/Library/Fonts/:
all 77 MS fonts beginning with Abadi MT Condensed Bold and ending with
Wingdings 3. You have Office 2004? (Not that I think X did anything
different.)

Got 2004, yup. Tried it again to make sure. Created a new test
"standard" type account. Ran word for the first time. Nothing put
into the ~/Library/Fonts folder.

The only difference would be that you already have all these fonts, in the
same versions, in /Library/Fonts/? Well, I'd be very surprised, but perhaps
Office looks in there in if ~/Library/Fonts/ is missing them, and if
/Library/Fonts/ already has the correct fonts in the correct versions
perhaps it leaves things be. As I say, I'd be surprised but perhaps that's
what happens. I'll ask MacBU and let you know if I get an answer.

I think that you've got it there and I WOULDN'T be surprised
because if you think of it, that is actually a very reasonable
thing to do. BTW, all of my office fonts HAVE been installed in
/Library/Fonts.

It makes a lot of sense in the following way. If a standard user
on a multi-account system runs an Office app for the first time,
on startup, that app need to make sure that all of its "pieces"
(including fonts) are available to the user of the app. If it
checks and finds that all of the necessary fonts are already
available (whether in the user's home area or in the public
/Library/Fonts area, it doesn't matter), it doesn't need to do
anything since everything is available to the user. If it DOESN'T
find the fonts that it needs installed anywhere, its going to
automatically install them in the place that they won't impact
anyone else on the system, i.e., in that user's ~/Library/Fonts
folder.

This makes a lot of sense and if I get the ambition up, I may try
remove all the Office fonts from my /Library/Fonts area and try
running Word. If I'm correct, It should show the behavior that
you've seen. Now there is the possibility that the installer
discerns between admin and standard users in which case running
Word from an admin account MIGHT put it back into the
/Library/Fonts area but I doubt it. It's simplerer to have all
accounts behave the same.

- Jeff

 

[Neill Massello]

2. Any time any user launches any Office app for the first time, all the
fonts in this /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts/ folder get
copied to the user's ~/Library/Fonts/ folder. That's the "First Run"
mechanism. You'll see "Optimizing fonts..." in the splash screen while
that's happening. If you create a new OS X user, that's what happens there
too. If you delete any of the Office fonts from there, they should just get
recreated again again the next time the user launches an Office app again.

That hasn't been my experience with Office for Mac. So long as a user's
Office preference files are intact, the only thing that may trigger the
First Run mechanism again is an Office updater.

 

[matt neuburg]

I think that you've got it there and I WOULDN'T be surprised
because if you think of it, that is actually a very reasonable
thing to do. BTW, all of my office fonts HAVE been installed in
/Library/Fonts.

The problem with this theory is that I already had a lot of the fonts
from Mac Office X and IE in /Library/Fonts and they were (as far as I
could tell) identical to fonts that Office installed in ~/Library/Fonts.
Of course this was not true for all of them, because some of the fonts
are new (like the Unicode TNR and Verdana).

However, I await the real answer from MacBU with bated breath! m.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I think that you've got it there and I WOULDN'T be surprised
because if you think of it, that is actually a very reasonable
thing to do. BTW, all of my office fonts HAVE been installed in
/Library/Fonts.

It makes a lot of sense in the following way. If a standard user
on a multi-account system runs an Office app for the first time,
on startup, that app need to make sure that all of its "pieces"
(including fonts) are available to the user of the app. If it
checks and finds that all of the necessary fonts are already
available (whether in the user's home area or in the public
/Library/Fonts area, it doesn't matter), it doesn't need to do
anything since everything is available to the user. If it DOESN'T
find the fonts that it needs installed anywhere, its going to
automatically install them in the place that they won't impact
anyone else on the system, i.e., in that user's ~/Library/Fonts
folder.

This makes a lot of sense and if I get the ambition up, I may try
remove all the Office fonts from my /Library/Fonts area and try
running Word. If I'm correct, It should show the behavior that
you've seen. Now there is the possibility that the installer
discerns between admin and standard users in which case running
Word from an admin account MIGHT put it back into the
/Library/Fonts area but I doubt it. It's simplerer to have all
accounts behave the same.

Here's what actually happens, direct from a MacBU Word developer. It's a lot
less sensible than what we thought.

At startup Office checks for one particular font (he couldn't remember which
- it might be the default Times New Roman, or might not) by asking the OS's
Font Manager. It's the Font Manager which does the look up (in the standard
~/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, /System/Library/Fonts order). It that one
font is not found by Font Manager, Office copies _all_ Office fonts to
~/Library/Fonts. If the is found , it copies nothing to anywhere.

Not a smart system: an ancient version of Internet Explorer might have
installed TNR and a dozen other fonts, say, to /Library/Fonts. If so, none
of the other 65 fonts will get installed anywhere. Maybe they'll change
this to a better system.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Tim Murray]

1. Office's installation mechanism creates a Fonts folder within
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/ with all the fonts. If you
delete or remove any of these fonts, or the whole Fonts folder, launching
any Office app recreates the missing fonts. That's the "Repair" mechanism at
work.

Not true. I've been using the Office products for years, now with 2004
products, and the folder has not been re-created on my system (Panther).

I place a few fonts common to all users in System/Library/Fonts, my
[user]/Library/Fonts and /Library/Fonts folders are empty, and things work
just fine, with no duplication. Suitcase manages the rest from a huge
library I have at the root of the hard disk.

 

[Tim Murray]

1. Office's installation mechanism creates a Fonts folder within
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/ with all the fonts. If you
delete or remove any of these fonts, or the whole Fonts folder, launching
any Office app recreates the missing fonts. That's the "Repair" mechanism at
work.

Not true. I've been using the Office products for years, now with 2004
products, and the folder has not been re-created on my system (Panther).

I place a few fonts common to all users in System/Library/Fonts, my
[user]/Library/Fonts and /Library/Fonts folders are empty, and things work
just fine, with no duplication. Suitcase manages the rest from a huge
library I have at the root of the hard disk.

I forgot to mention that during most of the day, I have only about a dozen
fonts enabled: four in System/Library/Fonts and eight in Suitcase. I mention
this in case readers thought that Office did not reinstall the fonts because
it detected them available anyway.

 

[matt neuburg]

Here's what actually happens, direct from a MacBU Word developer. It's a lot
less sensible than what we thought.

At startup Office checks for one particular font (he couldn't remember which
- it might be the default Times New Roman, or might not) by asking the OS's
Font Manager. It's the Font Manager which does the look up (in the standard
~/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, /System/Library/Fonts order). It that one
font is not found by Font Manager, Office copies _all_ Office fonts to
~/Library/Fonts. If the is found , it copies nothing to anywhere.

That is what I was afraid of. This is why, in my other message, I
mentioned that *some* of the the fonts already existing in /Library were
not identical to the new versions Office wants to install.

Not a smart system: an ancient version of Internet Explorer might have
installed TNR and a dozen other fonts, say, to /Library/Fonts. If so, none
of the other 65 fonts will get installed anywhere.

Not so, perhaps, because this will presumably not be same TNR. After
all, I *did* already have a TNR from earlier days (from IE, probably, or
Office X), but I still get the font install.

Also note that after you get past the *first* startup, you can do
anything you like. You can remove all the fonts that Office just
installed, and they will not be installed again. Of course, Word won't
work properly either, because a few of those fonts are pretty important
to it.

This really is not a smart system - nor is it user-friendly. m.

 

[Tim Murray]

Of course, Word won't work properly either, because a few of those fonts
are pretty important to it.

Not true. For the purpose of operation, Word does not "require" any of the
fonts it installs.