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

[Jeff Wiseman]

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

A bit of a technicality

*MICROSOFT* requires that all of it's fonts are installed. But
your point is well taken. Do you know though for sure that Office
applications all only use Mac OS X system fonts for things like
their pop-ups, menus, etc.? That would make sense being it's
suppose to run native on the OS X.

- Jeff

 

[matt neuburg]

I didn't say "require". What I did say, the way I said it, is true. For
example, if Verdana is not present, dictionary definitions will be
blank. So sure enough, that font turns out to have been pretty important
to it. The dictionary definitions are blank - Word isn't working
properly. And that's what I said. m.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Well, I just had to try this out. What a nightmare! ended up
being forced to reinstall all of Office!

comments below:

Paul Berkowitz <berkowit@spoof_silcom.com> wrote:

I have determined that now from my own experience. Furthermore I
really should have known better than to assume an approach that
made some sense would have been taken in Office...



*IF* this is true then It is NOT what happens the first time you
run an Office application. You can force a "first run" of an
office application by removing all the preference files from the
user's home library. There are 3 files and a folder. When you get
the first run it *DOES NOT SEEM TO MATTER AT ALL* if you have a
set of Office Fonts in the /Library/Fonts folder! It will copy a
set into the user's font folder regardless. What has been quoted
above MIGHT be the case after a first run but I've not seen it.
However, It may explain why on my machine, adding a new standard
user account (not an admin account) and running an office app did
NOT result in fonts being loaded into the user area.

What I did was after the fonts were loaded into my home fonts
area was to copy them ALL into the /Library/Fonts folder,
overwriting everything there. I tried this both from the Font
Book utility and I tried it from the finder afterward correcting
permissions (have to do this, even the silly Font Book utility is
broken this way--see my Font Book threads over in
comp.sys.mac.apps) Neither way made any difference to the results
which were this: When I deleted all the Office preferences in my
home area, A new set of fonts were ALWAYS dumped into my home
fonts folder--even with the copies just previously dumped into
the /Library/Fonts folder.

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.

That is likely because Apple distributes a couple of the same
fonts (like Times New Roman) that are earlier versions than those
provided with Office. I believe that on my system these include
Arial, Arial Narrow, Arial Rounded MT Bold, Comic Sans MS, and 4
or 5 others. Since I wanted the newer office fonts, I removed the
old Mac ones. If I didn't move the Office fonts all into the
/Library/Fonts area, then I could have just disable the older Mac
fonts.

BTW, It was as I originally suggested that the fonts in the
Office Application area do seem to be, in fact, the Office font
stash. Whenever you get the fonts loading into your home fonts
area, they are simply being copied from the Office application
fonts folder. I determined this by removing two of the fonts in
the application fonts folder. I then force the font load (by
removing the preference files) and all of the Office fonts except
those two magically showed up in my ~/Library/Fonts folder.

And the two that I had removed were NOT magically replaced. I had
to actually go back and replace the two I had moved out onto my
desktop. If you have an older version of Office (like a trial
copy distributed with the computer), when you do the update, the
install creates an "Old Fonts" folder where it puts all the older
version fonts from the earlier Office. This of course eats up
even more space in the Applications area.

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.

TNR is used in different applications so I highly doubt that TNR
would be the one used for the litmus test. It would be more
likely be a Microsoft proprietary typeface.

I do agree with the behaviors though. The discription that was
given for this doesn't seem to quite function that way. At least
not that I've seen. Note though that on MY iMac, if I create a
brand new account right now and startup Word, it does NOT copy
the fonts into the home fonts area, but I DO have all of the
office fonts moved into the /Library/Fonts folder, so there may
be some truth in it. Why it doesn't behave the same for my admin
account is a puzzle.

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.

Right. If you convice Office that a particular user has not ever
run it (i.e.,by removing the preference files that record this
fact), then Office WILL slam a new set of fonts into your user
fonts folder. As far as I can see, it never does that again. I
supposed it might be possible for an update to the install to go
around and hit the preferences for each account so that they
would update if necessary, but that would create a "delayed
install" for a bunch of unsuspecting users.

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

In so many ways Microsoft could improve things by simply
documenting how they work. The problem is, I'm not sure that
anybody really knows sometimes :-(

- Jeff

 

[Ben Borofka]

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.

That is a completely dumb system. Why not just make Fonts part of the
original Office installation? I suppose if you drag the Office 2004 folder
off the CD and launch a program for the first time, it could ask you if you
want to install the fonts (³For all users² or ³For this user only²), and
that would be a much improved method. Hopefully something like this could
get rolled into SP2, if it¹s coming anytime soon.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Of course, Word won't work properly either, because a few of those fonts

I didn't say "require". What I did say, the way I said it, is true. For
example, if Verdana is not present, dictionary definitions will be
blank. So sure enough, that font turns out to have been pretty important
to it. The dictionary definitions are blank - Word isn't working
properly. And that's what I said. m.

If wingdings (I think) isn't installed, Help won't show the cloverleaf, just
a "z."

DM

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

I didn't say "require". What I did say, the way I said it, is true. For
example, if Verdana is not present, dictionary definitions will be
blank. So sure enough, that font turns out to have been pretty important
to it. The dictionary definitions are blank - Word isn't working
properly. And that's what I said. m.

That's good to know, Matt. However, remember that Apple has a
version of Verdanna in the normal distribution for OS X as well

- Jeff

 

[matt neuburg]

However, It may explain why on my machine, adding a new standard
user account (not an admin account) and running an office app did
NOT result in fonts being loaded into the user area. [snip]
which were this: When I deleted all the Office preferences in my
home area, A new set of fonts were ALWAYS dumped into my home
fonts folder--even with the copies just previously dumped into
the /Library/Fonts folder.

Wait - I'm lost. Those two statements seem contradictory, since if you
create a new account that user obviously has no Office preferences.
Jeff, what are you saying is your theory as to how this works? m.

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

However, It may explain why on my machine, adding a new standard
user account (not an admin account) and running an office app did
NOT result in fonts being loaded into the user area.
[snip]

which were this: When I deleted all the Office preferences in my
home area, A new set of fonts were ALWAYS dumped into my home
fonts folder--even with the copies just previously dumped into
the /Library/Fonts folder.

Wait - I'm lost. Those two statements seem contradictory, since if you
create a new account that user obviously has no Office preferences.
Jeff, what are you saying is your theory as to how this works? m.

That was my point. I'm getting what seems to be two distinct and
contradictory behaviors. Given that the Office fonts are all
installed in /Library/Fonts:

1) If I remove all the Office preferences from my ADMIN account
~/Library/Preferences folder (i.e., the Microsoft folder, the
OfficeSync Prefs file, and the 2 com.microsoft.*.plist files) and
run Word, Office will copy the full set of fonts from the
Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/Fonts folder and put it into
my ~/Library/Fonts folder.

2) If I remove all the Office preferences as in "1)" above from
any of my STANDARD accounts (or create a new STANDARD account)
and then run Word from that account, NO FONTS will be installed
or copied anywhere.


------
NEW INFO:

I was about to close this note up when I had a thought and ran
another test. This is really bizzare and I'm sure that there is a
bug in the font handling of OS X that is contributing to this:

I wondered: What if one or more of these ill-behaved (wacko) font
files I have were the ones that Office checked for? Since my Font
book and apps in the Admin account can't see them, then office
wouldn't see them either resulting in the behavior I have (i.e.
it can't see, say, batang.ttf so it loads all of the fonts on the
first run in my admin account even though all others in the set
are visible.

To check this out, I went to one of my Standard accounts -- the
ones that never load fonts on a first run. I opened the Font Book
there and lo and behold, you could SEE those missing fonts that
are in the /Library/Fonts folder even though I could NOT see them
from my admin account! To test my theory, I then disabled ALL of
the Microsoft fonts in the standard account, deleted the Office
preferences and ran Word. Office then proceeded to load all of
the fonts into the Standard account's ~/Library/Fonts folder.

So it would seem that the MacBU was exactly correct and in fact,
the test for fonts likely involves these weird Windows .ttf
fonts. Great! Except here is where it gets bizzare...

Now I had all of the Microsoft fonts in the local area of the
standard account and all of the common area Microsoft fonts were
disabled so I'm just assuming that inspite of all the Panther
Cache Cleaner activity I had just done, somehow my font system in
the Admin account was fouled up. But when I went and looked in
the Font Book in the standard account, those font files had once
again DISAPPEARED from BOTH the User and Computer collections
there as well.

Now follow closely: I selected the User collection in the
standard account Font Book, did a select all on the fonts, and
then Remove Font. All fonts in the User collection dissappered
but their corresponding fonts in the computer collection ALSO
disappeared! I went in with the finder to the ~/Library/Fonts
folder and it was empty except for the presence of that same
group of fonts that the Font Book cannot see. When I looked into
the /Library/Fonts folder, the full set of Microsoft fonts was
still there (as I would expect since the Standard account should
not be able to delete those). However, absolutly none of them are
now viewable in the Font Book from the standard account which
means that the proper operation of their presence blocking a
loading of new fonts for first runs is now screwed up since even
though they are really there, the standard account can't see them.

It is as though the "Computer" and "User" Collections are being
fouled up. I deleted all of the fonts that had been loaded into
the standard account and now they all still show up in the font
book window even though there is nothing in the folder. Logging
out and then back in fixes everything except you still can't see
those screwy fonts that are in the local area.

SUMMARY:

I've been beating on this too long to now think straight. What
the MacBU says appears to be true except some kind of bug in the
Font Book or Font service managment software is preventing it
from working consistently. Repoduction of the bug(s) might be as
follows:

- You have the full set of MS fonts in /Library/Fonts

- From a new standard account you can see them all in Font Book
and applications

- From the standard account disable all the MS fonts in
/Library/Fonts using Font Book

- Do a first run with Word -- a full set of MS fonts are loaded
into ~/Library/Fonts -- HOWEVER, you now cannot see the weird
set of about 6 or 7 asian .ttf fonts with Font Book or any
applications.

- If you delete all the fonts in ~/Library/Fonts using Font Book,
it will appear that they are all gone but examination by the
finder will reveal the presence of the wacko fonts. It also
appears that the presence of all the same font names in the
/Library/Fonts area will also disappear from the Font Book
although nothing is touched in /Library/Fonts (standard account).

- Logging out and then back in will allow Font Book to again
"see" the normal fonts in the computer collection but it will
STILL not be able to see the wacko fonts in either the computer
or users collections.

--- the problem seems to trigger on the presence of duplicates of
the wacko fonts in two different areas of the font search chain.
They don't like each other so they go away and hide. The only
good news (for me anyway) is that they are all asian fonts that I
will likely never use and so by removing them from the system I
might avoid weird font behavior but how can you be sure....

--- Then static nature of the problem must be with the account
environment somehow since one account will be able to see the
presence of the wacko fonts when another cannot. mucking around
with two sets of Microsoft Office fonts in your font path (or the
actual importing of a second set by office) is enough to turn the
former into the latter.

It's no wonder I originally heard of so many different behaviors.

- Jeff

 

[Tim Murray]

I didn't say "require". What I did say, the way I said it, is true. For
example, if Verdana is not present, dictionary definitions will be
blank. So sure enough, that font turns out to have been pretty important
to it. The dictionary definitions are blank - Word isn't working
properly. And that's what I said. m.

Ummm, still not true, at least on my system. I just played around with Word
.... including the dictionary ... with only Geneva, Chicago, Lucida Grande,
Keyboard, and Last Resort, and it works fine. The dictionary's misspelled
word looks funny, as it's a shrunk-down Chicago, but the suggested spellings
look like Lucida Grande.

 

[js]

Got You started on this subject Thanks all.

My present way to do it, since I dont want 80M Fonts on every account
is,
I copy fresh MS fonts to
/Library/Fonts then erase the /App../Ms.../Fonts folder.
Leavin ~usr/Library/Fonsts empty

Next step would be to move the fonts to /Network/Library/Fonts, were I
really would like them, giving the whole LAN the same, easy manageable
fonts.

Joachim

 

[Jeff Wiseman]

Got You started on this subject Thanks all.

Yes, but did you get answers to YOUR questions?

Seriously, I spent about three days on this before I figured it
out. If you didn't see it, it's the thread named "Why your Office
2004 Fonts want to keep loading in OS X - an explaination" in
this same newsgroup. It summarized a lot of what I found out.

My present way to do it, since I dont want 80M Fonts on every account
is,
I copy fresh MS fonts to
/Library/Fonts then erase the /App../Ms.../Fonts folder.
Leavin ~usr/Library/Fonsts empty

That would do it with a few caveats. First of all, it's probably
a good idea to leave the application Fonts folder for office in
place but empty (i.e., don't remove the folder itself). Who knows
how removing the folder itself could break future Office updates
and prevent you from getting any font updates. I know, I know,
the designers should check for the presence of a folder but you
KNOW how these applications make all kinds of assumptions.

Secondly, the problem partially has to do with some screwyness in
the OS X Font environment so even with an empty folder, you will
still have Word (or Excel, Powerpoint, Entourage, etc.)
attempting to load those fonts everytime they start for the first
time. Probably no big deal since once it happens, it has nothing
to copy, and then it usually won't try again.

Next step would be to move the fonts to /Network/Library/Fonts, were I
really would like them, giving the whole LAN the same, easy manageable
fonts.

You shouldn't have any problems with that either, then you should
take them out of /Library/Fonts as those would take precedence
over anything that you put in the Network fonts area.

- Jeff