Optimizing font menu performance....

[Dorothy Titus]

I just installed Office 2004. Microsoft Word will not work. It starts up, gets
to "Optimizing font menu performance..." and never goes any further. I've
let it run for half an hour or more but it doesn't get beyond this point.

When I installed Office 2004 and went through set-up, I first got a message
that it was installing a bunch of fonts, all of which I already have. Then I got
several error messages about some of the fonts being corrupted. This is
likely related to the problem. What do I do now?

I sure hope the rest of Office 2004 is better than this.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Dorothy,

It's not Office 2004 that's at fault. It's doing its job by telling you
that you have corrupt (or duplicate) fonts. The procedures for isolating
and removing them are here: <http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313535>

When you get to the part where it says to add the fonts back in one by one,
do this instead (its much faster): Add back one half of the fonts and check
for problems, then the other half. Then divide the problematic half in half
again and continue till you isolate the offending font(s). Don't forget
that it can be more than one.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

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

 

[matt neuburg]

I just installed Office 2004. Microsoft Word will not work. It starts
up, gets to "Optimizing font menu performance..." and never goes any
further. I've let it run for half an hour or more but it doesn't get
beyond this point.

When I installed Office 2004 and went through set-up, I first got a
message that it was installing a bunch of fonts, all of which I already
have. Then I got several error messages about some of the fonts being
corrupted. This is likely related to the problem. What do I do now?

I sure hope the rest of Office 2004 is better than this.

Yes, I'm just writing up instructions for dealing with this mess. You
probably have font conflicts caused by the installation of those fonts.
I recommend that you remove from your User/Library/Fonts folder all the
fonts that just got peremptorily installed by Word, except for Times New
Roman, Verdana, Wingdings, Arial and Trebuchet MS. Then use Apple's Font
Book application to resolve conflicts, disabling the wrong ones so as to
make sure that the ones in your User/Library/Fonts folder are in fact
the activated ones. m.

 

[Elliott Roper]

I just installed Office 2004. Microsoft Word will not work. It starts up,
gets
to "Optimizing font menu performance..." and never goes any further. I've
let it run for half an hour or more but it doesn't get beyond this point.

When I installed Office 2004 and went through set-up, I first got a message
that it was installing a bunch of fonts, all of which I already have. Then I
got
several error messages about some of the fonts being corrupted. This is
likely related to the problem. What do I do now?

I sure hope the rest of Office 2004 is better than this.

If you have Panther (aka Mac OS X 10.3.x) use Font Book to disable
fonts till you find the guilty ones. You should start by using
Edit->Resolve differences.

The fastest way is to disable half of them, see if Word barfs, If no,
then enable half the disabled fonts, if yes disable the active ones and
enable the others then disable half of them.

If you have 4096 fonts, it will only take 12 iterations to find a
single bad font. It is mildly more interesting if you have more than
one, but still easy enough.

You may need to restart Word each time (Or force quit it by the look of
your problem) for the Font Book changes to be noticed. You certainly
need to do that in the previous v.X. Word 2004 might be better. It is
easy enough to check innit?

If you are on an earlier version of OS X, then do the same trick by
flinging fonts about in the finder. Remember there are three places you
may need to disable fonts. ~/Library/Fonts (your personal fonts)
/Library/Fonts (fonts for all users on your machine)
System Folder/Fonts (fonts for all users under Classic)
The network and /System/Fonts also have fonts, but you shouldn't/can't
touch them.

Font Book is useful for keeping your Word fonts manageable.
Keep a collection called 'everyday' or something similar, and disable
every font but the ones in that collection. I disable about 90% of all
my fonts while I'm using Office. They are mostly silly ones, and Word
makes your work look enough like a ransom note without fonts like curlz
or comic sans.

I also just discovered that when the fonts drop-down menu is dropped
down, typing the first few letters of the font name takes you there.

One final tip. Turn off wysiwyg font menus. At least in word v.X it
works much faster.

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

If you have Panther (aka Mac OS X 10.3.x) use Font Book to disable
fonts till you find the guilty ones. You should start by using
Edit->Resolve differences.

The fastest way is to disable half of them, see if Word barfs, If no,
then enable half the disabled fonts, if yes disable the active ones and
enable the others then disable half of them.

If you have 4096 fonts, it will only take 12 iterations to find a
single bad font. It is mildly more interesting if you have more than
one, but still easy enough.

You may need to restart Word each time (Or force quit it by the look of
your problem) for the Font Book changes to be noticed. You certainly
need to do that in the previous v.X. Word 2004 might be better. It is
easy enough to check innit?

If you are on an earlier version of OS X, then do the same trick by
flinging fonts about in the finder. Remember there are three places you
may need to disable fonts. ~/Library/Fonts (your personal fonts)
/Library/Fonts (fonts for all users on your machine)
System Folder/Fonts (fonts for all users under Classic)
The network and /System/Fonts also have fonts, but you shouldn't/can't
touch them.

Font Book is useful for keeping your Word fonts manageable.
Keep a collection called 'everyday' or something similar, and disable
every font but the ones in that collection. I disable about 90% of all
my fonts while I'm using Office. They are mostly silly ones, and Word
makes your work look enough like a ransom note without fonts like curlz
or comic sans.

I also just discovered that when the fonts drop-down menu is dropped
down, typing the first few letters of the font name takes you there.

One final tip. Turn off wysiwyg font menus. At least in word v.X it
works much faster.

Although this has nothing to do with this problem other than its related to Office
installing fonts. I had a problem changing a date in a Pdf with Acrobat 6. It
threwup a notice abot the font I was using could not be edited. (not exact message).

Turns Out I had an adobe version of CooperBlack installe on my OS9 partition I had
used to design this filemaker File used in this PDF.

Turns out Office had installed a MS version 2004 of CooperBlackMs. Acrobat was
squawking because the system was trying use the MS version instead of my original
version.

So the MSFonts can cause problems in other programs. Looks like Office could poll
all font locations and if it detect the font installed even if its an older version,
and turn off installing that font.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
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If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>

 

[Elliott Roper]

Turns out Office had installed a MS version 2004 of CooperBlackMs. Acrobat
was
squawking because the system was trying use the MS version instead of my
original
version.

So the MSFonts can cause problems in other programs. Looks like Office could poll
all font locations and if it detect the font installed even if its an older version,
and turn off installing that font.

While that might be superfically attractive, I think it might be a bad
idea. Duplicate fonts could come from anywhere, so asking Office
installer to be more polite as it sprays fonts all over the place would
not be a complete solution. Font Book will show duplicate fonts and
provide you with the tools to manage them. It will do so without fear
or favour, across all sources of font and for all programs that use
fonts.

I would much prefer that Office played nice with enable and disable
font in Font Book, allowing one to update the active set of fonts
without closing all your work and exiting Word, changing the fonts in
Fontbook, starting Word and re-opening all your files and finding your
place in each of them.

If Word *really* wanted to do the right thing, it would utter a
meaningful error message on encountering a corrupt font, even if later
it plummeted off the edge of the world in a hissy fit.

Then no-one would have to read my long and rambling posts of how to
play BullCow on your font collection just to get Word to avoid its own
ritual self-disembowelment.

OK Mac BU? Now is your chance to save the group from death by boredom.

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

While that might be superfically attractive, I think it might be a bad
idea. Duplicate fonts could come from anywhere, so asking Office
installer to be more polite as it sprays fonts all over the place would
not be a complete solution. Font Book will show duplicate fonts and
provide you with the tools to manage them. It will do so without fear
or favour, across all sources of font and for all programs that use
fonts.

I would much prefer that Office played nice with enable and disable
font in Font Book, allowing one to update the active set of fonts
without closing all your work and exiting Word, changing the fonts in
Fontbook, starting Word and re-opening all your files and finding your
place in each of them.

If Word *really* wanted to do the right thing, it would utter a
meaningful error message on encountering a corrupt font, even if later
it plummeted off the edge of the world in a hissy fit.

Then no-one would have to read my long and rambling posts of how to
play BullCow on your font collection just to get Word to avoid its own
ritual self-disembowelment.

OK Mac BU? Now is your chance to save the group from death by boredom.

Another thing that could happen, which don't think would ever see the light of day
for fear of adobe fearing being taken over by MS. would be for MS and adobe to enter
into an agreement to allow adobe to embed MS fonts without throwing up the message.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>