The return of the font fuss

[Andrea Reece]

Mac 10.6.2
Word 2004 90722
Word 2008 12.2.3

After I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I fixed various font issues by deleting
the caches and manually removing duplicates. Worked like a charm and I no
longer had bullets appearing as boxes and other oddities.

Earlier this week I recently installed the latest Microsoft updates to both
versions of Word. Now the bullets are boxes again. I ran Font Nuke to kill
the caches and restarted and used Font Explorer to check for conflicts (it
didn't find any). It's not doing the trick.

What am I forgetting to do or what new font issue is there with all the
latest patches?

Thanks.

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Try going to Username> Library > Preference > Office 2008 > and look
for Font cache(12).

With Office Closed move to trash, empty then open Word2008 you should
see in start up screen "optimizing Fonts ...." wait until finished.
Screen should come up try Bullets.

Not if your using word2004 you will not see the Office2008 folder, or if
you have both don't go into that folder . instead remove Font cache(11).
Open Word2004 and you will see the same message about optimizing fonts.
Wait and try to type a Bullet.

Username is the name you gave the account you use when operating OSX.
example If you used John Smith it would be johnsmith > Library > ...

 

[Andrea Reece]

Removing the font caches is what I did earlier with Font Nuke. It did find
the caches for both 2008 and 2004 (11 and 12).

I just went ahead and manually deleted the cache (12) for Office 2008 as you
described. When I opened 2008 it did the optimizing font thing, but the
bullets are still an issue.

I'm beginning to think fonts are evil. Or caches are evil?

Thanks.

 

[Andrea Reece]

I just saved a document with the bullet problem down to Word 2004 and opened
it there. The bullets appeared fine. This appears to be strictly a Word 2008
problem.

 

[CyberTaz]

Have you run Disk Utility - Repair Disk Permissions since installing the
Office 2008 update? Try that... It's possible that the font involved is
stored in a font folder somewhere other than where the updated version of
Word 2008 is being allowed access.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Andrea Reece]

That gave me hope, but it didn't work. There were a few permissions to
repair, but for the most part they had to do with Safari (which I rarely
use) and apple parental controls. I repaired them all, but it didn't make a
difference.

I checked FontExplorer again and it said there were no duplicates. Mac's
Font Book said there were though. So I went through and disabled fonts where
there were duplicates (leaving the most current version). Deleted the font
cache again, rebooted. Still didn't work.

Don't worry about that sound, it's just me banging my head against my desk.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I checked FontExplorer again and it said there were no duplicates. Mac's
Font Book said there were though. So I went through and disabled fonts where
there were duplicates (leaving the most current version). Deleted the font
cache again, rebooted. Still didn't work.

Did you use the software to deactivate or did you move them manually to
a different location?

There has been multiple reports that Font Book had issues really
deactivating the fonts and that moving them was the only way to go...


Corentin

 

[Andrea Reece]

Hmm, that sounds promising. I just deactivated them, but left them where
they were.

Is there a way to move the fonts in the tool or should I use the Reveal in
Finder function to move the font myself in Finder?

This is different from the Remove option?

Thanks.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Is there a way to move the fonts in the tool or should I use the Reveal in
Finder function to move the font myself in Finder?

You have to use Reveal in Finder unfortunately.
And it is different from Remove (which simply deactivates the font but
leaves it where it is).

Corentin

 

[Andrea Reece]

Unfortunately I manually removed the older duplicate fonts (moved to trash
after making a backup copy in a separate folder). Cleared the caches and
rebooted. Not only did it not solve the problem, now it's happening again in
Word 2004.

Sigh. Thanks again for the help everyone.

Andrea

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Andrea;

What happens if you run Word from a different User Account?

How about if you launch Word while holding the Shift key?

Does the problem persist if you log in while holding Shift?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Unfortunately I manually removed the older duplicate fonts (moved to trash
after making a backup copy in a separate folder). Cleared the caches and
rebooted. Not only did it not solve the problem, now it's happening again in
Word 2004.

Did you also delete the Office font cache?? Not just the System and user
one?

Corentin

 

[Tim Murray]

Mac 10.6.2
Word 2004 90722
Word 2008 12.2.3

After I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I fixed various font issues by deleting
the caches and manually removing duplicates. Worked like a charm and I no
longer had bullets appearing as boxes and other oddities.

Earlier this week I recently installed the latest Microsoft updates to both
versions of Word. Now the bullets are boxes again. I ran Font Nuke to kill
the caches and restarted and used Font Explorer to check for conflicts (it
didn't find any). It's not doing the trick.

See if you have more than one Symbol font installed; you could have a Type 1,
a TrueType, and a dfont. Not sure if Font Explorer would consider them
duplicates. Manually check in:

MacHD:System:Library:Fonts
MacHD:Users:YourUserName:Library:Fonts
MacHD:Libary:Fonts

Try using just one -- Symbol.dfont -- and see what happens.

 

[Diane Ross]

MacHD:Users:YourUserName:Library:Fonts

Prior to Office 2008, Microsoft fonts were installed in the User's
Library/Fonts folder. You can delete all of those.

Fonts to delete after installing Snow Leopard (includes help deleting font
caches)

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

 

[Sherri_Eng]

I had this very same problem with Snow Leopard and MS Word 2008.

After spending a week of back and forth emails with Microsoft and an hour-long conversation with Apple, I believe we finally solved the problem. We determined that it was the Symbol font in the system, which was installed by Microsoft. Once we deleted the font, the solid bullets worked.

Go to the Macintosh hard drive -->Library -->Fonts. Delete Symbol. Restart your computer and launch Word. The bullets should work.

Hope that helps.

Sherri

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Sherri;

I don't mean to rain on your parade but I'm afraid your friends at Apple
[or Microsoft] may have misled you. The installed Symbol font may very well
have been damaged or might have been an out of date version which certainly
would account for the problem. In that case, however, it needed to be
*replaced* by installing a "well" copy, not removed altogether. The Symbol
font is used by the software for a variety of internal purposes & without it
you will likely run into other issues... Especially if you receive documents
from other users in which the Symbol font has been used.

Unless you have it installed in another font folder it would be best to
install a new copy. You should be able to install a clean copy from your
Office installation DVD.

Thanks for posting the information. Font issues are one of the main problems
we've been dealing with here since the release of Snow Leopard.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Andrea Reece]

Thanks to everyone who has been chiming in. I had deadlines to meet and had
to live with the problem for a while. I'll try to address all the various
suggestions in one email, because unfortunately I am still having the
problem.

I have both manually deleted all the font caches and used Font Nuke to
delete all the caches, so I feel fairly confident I've been doing that step
correctly.

I have both Word 2004 and Word 2008 installed with Snow Leopard and need
both to work. I had fixed the duplicate font issue after upgrading to Snow
Leopard by disabling fonts in both versions of Word. I installed the latest
Snow Leopard patch plus patches for both versions of Word and the problem
returned in Word 2008 but not Word 2004.

I then deleted all duplicate fonts using Finder, making sure I deleted older
versions. That didn't fix the problem in 2008 and it reappeared in 2004.

Font Book validates all fonts except for Bauhaus, but the problem remains.

I've been looking at http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html and I
don't exactly match the list. However, I haven't been getting any system
messages (for example, the font that terminal allegedly needs in the
HD:Library:Fonts folder isn't there but terminal displays same as it ever
has). There's a comment about Word 2004 needing certain fonts in number 3
that may be why I saw the problem reoccur in 2004 after manually deleting
some fonts.

In MacHD:Library:Fonts I have 5 files: encodings.dir, fonts.dir, fonts.list,
fonts.scale, Hoefler Text.ttc

In MacHD:Library:Fonts:Microsoft I have 4 files which are the same files
listed above without Hoefler

In MacHD:Users:YourUserName:Library:Fonts contains all other fonts.

That's where I am. I'm not certain what to try next. Sorry for the long
message.

Thanks again for all the time and help.

Hi Sherri;

I don't mean to rain on your parade but I'm afraid your friends at Apple
[or Microsoft] may have misled you. The installed Symbol font may very well
have been damaged or might have been an out of date version which certainly
would account for the problem. In that case, however, it needed to be
*replaced* by installing a "well" copy, not removed altogether. The Symbol
font is used by the software for a variety of internal purposes & without it
you will likely run into other issues... Especially if you receive documents
from other users in which the Symbol font has been used.

Unless you have it installed in another font folder it would be best to
install a new copy. You should be able to install a clean copy from your
Office installation DVD.

Thanks for posting the information. Font issues are one of the main problems
we've been dealing with here since the release of Snow Leopard.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

I had this very same problem with Snow Leopard and MS Word 2008.

After spending a week of back and forth emails with Microsoft and an
hour-long
conversation with Apple, I believe we finally solved the problem. We
determined that it was the Symbol font in the system, which was installed by
Microsoft. Once we deleted the font, the solid bullets worked.

Go to the Macintosh hard drive -->Library -->Fonts. Delete Symbol. Restart
your computer and launch Word. The bullets should work.

Hope that helps.

Sherri

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Font Book validates all fonts except for Bauhaus, but the problem remains.

Deactivate it.
What's critical here is to manually deactivate the fonts by moving them
in a different location in the Finder,
Do rely on Font Book only as there seems to be something not quite right
with it.
Few people use Bauhaus, so I took the decision to deactivate it.
On my Mac, here is the list of fonts from /Library/Fonts/Microsoft I
deactivated:
Andale Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Arial Narrow
Arial Rounded Bold
Bauhaus 93
Brush Script.ttf
Comic Sans MS
Georgia
Impact
Tahoma
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Wingdings 2
Wingdings 3

All of them are in duplicates (and the version that came with Snow
Leopard appears to be newer), except fro Bauhaus 93 which seems to be
corrupted (and I don't want to take chances).

After deactivating them, I used Onyx to trash the system user and
application (Office) font cache.


Corentin

 

[Andrea Reece]

It's a happy happy day! And Symbol might very well have been part of the
problem. This is what worked for me to finally solve all font problems that
resurfaced after applying the snow leopard and Word 2004 & 2008 patches.
Sorry if this runs long, but on the off case it helps someone else, I ask
your indulgence. Additionally, there might be other best practices steps I
should take that others point out.

To recap, I tried deactivating duplicate fonts found by Font Book. Turns out
this may have been adequate after all, but based on advice from the list I
copied the fonts elsewhere and manually deleted these fonts. Font Book found
no duplicates and the only issue was one with Bauhaus. I dutifully cleaned
out all font caches, but the font problem persisted, predominantly with
bullets.

Yesterday I used Finder compared the contents of HD:System:Library:Fonts
with HD:Users:User:Library:Fonts. These are the duplicates I found; mind
you, they aren't exact duplicates:

System: courier.dfont User: CourierNew.ttf (or close name)
System: Geneva.dfont User: GenevaCY.dfont
System: HelveLTM User: HelveticaCY.dfont (6.1d5e1)
Helvetica LTM
Helvetica.dfont (6.1d18e)
HelveticaNeue.ttc
System: LucidaGrande.ttc User: Lucida Blackletter
Lucida Bright
Lucida Calligraphy
Lucida Console
Lucida Fax
Lucida Handwriting
System: STHeitiLight.ttc User: STHeitiMedium.ttc
System: Symbol.ttf User: Symbol_o.ttf
System: Times LT MM User: Times New Roman....ttf (4 dif flavors)
Times.dfont (6.1d3e1) Microsoft open type fonts
TimesLTMM

Hope the formatting endures.

I left some of the fonts alone. The actions I took:

Deleted User version of CourierNew.ttf (whatever the exact name was)
Moved System version of STHeitiLight.ttc to User (copied then deleted)
Deleted User version of Symbol_o.ttf

I suspect CourierNew and Symbol_o were the culprits for the bullet issues. I
probably should delete the Times versions from Microsoft, but I'm a bit
nervous.

The Lucida System vs. User fonts were interesting to me. The System Lucida
are version 6.1d4e1 from Bigelow & Holmes. The User versions are 1.69 and
also from Bigelow & Holmes. My rationale was that their own fonts should
play well together, so I've left all versions for now.

The Geneva.dfont 6.1.d3e1 vs. User GenevaCY.dfont 6.1d5e1 is another one I
left both versions. According to the link I posted earlier, Mac requires
Geneva.dfont in System. But it sure looks like GenevaCY.dfont is more
current.

Thanks for listening to my saga. Any additional recommendations are
appreciated. My takeaway? Don't trust a font manager to find all duplicates
that might be causing problems.

Hi Sherri;

I don't mean to rain on your parade but I'm afraid your friends at Apple
[or Microsoft] may have misled you. The installed Symbol font may very well
have been damaged or might have been an out of date version which certainly
would account for the problem. In that case, however, it needed to be
*replaced* by installing a "well" copy, not removed altogether. The Symbol
font is used by the software for a variety of internal purposes & without it
you will likely run into other issues... Especially if you receive documents
from other users in which the Symbol font has been used.

Unless you have it installed in another font folder it would be best to
install a new copy. You should be able to install a clean copy from your
Office installation DVD.

Thanks for posting the information. Font issues are one of the main problems
we've been dealing with here since the release of Snow Leopard.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

I had this very same problem with Snow Leopard and MS Word 2008.

After spending a week of back and forth emails with Microsoft and an
hour-long
conversation with Apple, I believe we finally solved the problem. We
determined that it was the Symbol font in the system, which was installed by
Microsoft. Once we deleted the font, the solid bullets worked.

Go to the Macintosh hard drive -->Library -->Fonts. Delete Symbol. Restart
your computer and launch Word. The bullets should work.

Hope that helps.

Sherri