Getting InDesign to See Your Fonts
December 15th, 2006Susan wrote:
We use CS2 and we are having trouble with our fonts. When we open up a layout it will tell us the fonts are missing. I go to the library to check and they are there. I have replaced them as well. Why is InDesign not recognizing the fonts?
There are many possible solutions here, and I invite readers to write in with your experiences. But here’s one trick I always like to try: InDesign’s Fonts folder. Most people don’t realize that InDesign has its own Fonts folder. It’s located in the same folder as the application itself (along with the plug-ins and presets folders). If you put a font in that folder, InDesign can almost always see it. Even better, you can put an alias (or “shortcut,” or whatever you want to call it) to a folder of fonts and InDesign can see all those fonts!
For example, if someone sends me a document to open, along with their fonts, I do not want to load all their fonts onto my system. Instead, I just make an alias from their fonts folder and place it in my InDesign fonts folder. I don’t even need to relaunch InDesign; it just sees them automatically.
The Fonts folder can do other magic, too. For example, you can put instances of multiple master fonts in them and InDesign can read them (even though multiple master fonts are no longer officially supported). You can put a Windows -only font inside the Fonts folder in the Macintosh version of InDesign and it can use it!
So while I don’t have any good answers to why ID isn’t seeing the fonts that it should see, I would recommend trying to put a font in the Fonts folder and see if it works. Perhaps other folks can recommend other troubleshooting techniques you might try.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been using Linotype FontExplorer X and it works wonders.
After suffering with Suitcase (oh, gawd I HATED that Suitcase) for years, FontExplorer X just works.
The best part is: it’s free.
And no, I don’t work for them
I used to use Suitcase & even bought the latest version for both of my Macs. But it simply does not work! Fonts that are reported fine by Font Doctor (part of the Suitcase Fusion bundle), are reported as corrupt by Suitcase, even though the previous version would happily load them!
So I tried using the previous version for a while, but I would still get strange problems no & then.
So I decided to try Linotype Font Explorer - WOW!
No more font problems for me.
I don’t like the way it can’t add a font temporarily without adding it to it’s library (but I get around this by labelling a font like this).
It’s by no means perfect, but I spend less time fiddling with fonts now
One word of warning - you can get VERY strange results at times when sending a job to a client, who uses Suitcase, text re-runs etc… But this has only happened once & I get around this by checking if they need the InDesign files rather than a PDF & if they do need the InDesign files, then I use Suitcase X1.
One last thing… On a regular basis, I clean Font Cache files using Tiger Cache Cleaner by Northern Softworks, works for me & I have very few font problems now.
Oh my, what a topic!
I can’t count the hours I’ve wasted on this exact issue. My favoirte line is “why is it that we have the technology to put man on the moon, but we can’t get our friggin’ fonts to work right?”
Let me start by stating that I’ve experienced this exact issue MANY a time — where a font is loaded — other apps can see the font — but the text is pinked out in InDesign. I’ll go further than that — with two documents open in InDesign, I’ve seen where the font is available in one of the documents, but not the other!
I’ve spoken to Will Eisley about this, and it was a bona fide bug for a while. Especially in CS — although I’ve encountered this FAR less in InDesign CS2 (in fact, I can’t remember seeing it happen in quite a while, so maybe a dot-release fixed it?).
Just for the record, I use Font Reserve.
When I had this issue, the only way to resolve it was to quit and relaunch InDesign. I think the bug had something to do with being in InDesign, and then switching to another app, and then switching back again, at which time InDesign would “forget” about which fonts it was using.
In either case, as I said earlier, I haven’t seen it happen on my system for several months now. I would suggest that you make sure you’ve got the latest update installed.
And, strangely enough, I almost never have had that happen to me. But I don’t use a font manager. (Or more precisely I use FontBook, but generally don’t open and close the fonts at all.)
I’m like Steve, I go commando without any font management tool at all (I don’t even use Font Book), and have ever since OS 9.2. In OS X it’s a dream, I drop fonts into my user > library > fonts folder *while ID’s “missing fonts” dialog box is up* and when I come back to ID, it thinks about it for a while and then it goes away.
And I too have seldom (if ever) had the problem of ID not seeing fonts that other apps could.
One thing that *will* mess up ID though is if you have two+ typefaces active but they’re in different formats… Helvetica TT and Helvetica T1 for example. You get a lot of TT fonts in Mac OS X because of the .dfonts preinstalled in the OS. Font managers can clean that up for you but you can also do it yourself.
One other thing I’ve found very useful when diagnosing font problems in ID is to look at Type > Find Font > More Info to see *where ID is finding the font* … the suitcase folder? the system > library folder? etc.
I like David’s technique of using ID’s own Fonts folder, though I can’t say I’ve ever used it myself.
This is a great trick. My newspaper’s body text is set in Times Europa. IDCS very often would NOT show it formatted as small caps (it would be pinked out). The problem resumed last week in IDCS2, and putting the Times Europa screen and printer fonts into the InDesign Fonts folder solved it immediately. Note that I was using Linotype Font Explorer and it still happened.
We have Suitcase here at work and I absolutely hate it. It’s sooo slow to open fonts and then it automatically closes fonts when a file isn’t open which takes even longer! Synchronizing fonts is a pain in the azz! hate it hate it hate it!
Thanks for letting me vent.
At work i’m connected to a network and it seems that sometimes one computer has named a font a little bit different ie. Swiss 721 or Swiss721. I find myself replacing fonts regularly if someone else has worked on the same job.
Yes, InDesign sometimes takes a bit of time loading a font, but it always does it eventually (using FontAgent Pro) unless like Anne-Marie says, you have a TT and T1 battling it out. Recently though, I was converting files from Quark 6 to InDesign. Lordy, Lordy, you want font problems? With every single file, Quark would ask for and then refuse to see some or all of the required fonts after loading them. I’d go back and forth, InDesign could see them everytime. Quark: uh uh.
Worked beautifully with CS2 on OS X 10.4.8. Many many thanks for the tip. On a lark I copied the aliases to my AI folder as well, just in case it decides to act up sometime in the future.
I wish I could get away with not using a font management app but I use far to many fonts to manually manage them using the user font folder. I had so much trouble with Suitcase I tried everything else and found FontAgentPro to be the best.
Thanks for the tip about placing a font file or alias in the ID font folder. But this one font, News Plantin MT -postscript (which is there and activated in my Linotype FontExplorer X and prints fine in, say, Illustrator) is missing in ID…but isn’t pinked out…just missing to print. Wouldn’t ya know I’ve already used it in a banner header plus want to use it as the body text in current job. BLAH! Any fast suggestions would be much appreciated..??
Hey fontlovers… there is a great review comparing Suitcase Fusion, FontExplorerX and FontAgentPro at Ars Technica at http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/fontmanagers.ars (no I don’t work for those companies or write for ArsTechnica) and as it turns out, there is something wrong with all 3 of them. Also no one has mentioned the Keyboard Shortcut that David mentioned in an earlier podcast— “Update Missing Font List” {the last item in the “Text & Tables” Product Area} sometimes this might work when other apps can see an activated font but InDesign still says no.
Excellent points, Jason. Thanks for the reference!
Just to say I’ve solved my problem of Jan. 7: Answer ended up being simple although cause not clear: In preflight, I “changed” the name of the missing font showing (News Plantin Roman) to plain News Plantin…which doesn’t even have a Roman but a Regular…how the name got corrupted, I don’t know for sure. Thanks David B. for responding to help.
I have seen this happen before, and it’s often very confusing. Sometimes it’s a Mac vs. Windows thing (Regular vs. Roman). Sometimes it’s just cosmic rays.
I am new to InDesign and new to this discussion page. My current task is to create a large technical manual using InDesignCS2 in a MS Windows XP Environment. The initial draft is a 200-page MS Word document.A critical section of the manual is the index. Once final, the English version will be translated into more than 35 languages, so I must be sure to use a Unicode font. Any and all advice for such a project is most welcome! I am most eager to hear how others have created comprehensive Indexes, Tables of Contents, Cross-references, and other standard textbook features. Thank you in advance for any and all dialogue on this topic.
Cynthia, you should definitely check out the InDesigner topic on indexes (click “Watch the Videocast” button on the left). As for a font: InDesign ships with several that are quite good, including Myriad Pro and Minion Pro. These Pro fonts have a number of multi-lingual glyphs in them already, including Cyrillic, Greek, and some characters that I can’t identify (probably Klingon or something).
All I’m trying to do is paste a formatted box from one ID doc to another with all of the formatting intact. [CS2] the originating box is set to NONE for object styles, but when i paste it in the new doc, it automatically makes it a basic text frame - even if i select NONE in the new doc before pasting. So it shows up in the basic paragraph format AND pinked out even though it’s loaded. UGH! HELP!
Lexi, your comment doesn’t really have to do with finding fonts, but: My guess is that the text inside the text frame is set to Basic Paragraph Style. Yes? Try either breaking the link to the BPS or applying a different paragraph style to that text before copy/pasting the frame.
thanks for your quick response! i am not sure what you mean by breaking the link other than setting it to another paragraph style. The only problem is that I have already applied a lot of kerning and adjustments to the text so that if I applied a paragraph style, I am afraid they would reset the spacing etc. i guess i’ll try that and reset the type. i suspect it will work. thanks!
Lexi, sorry I wasn’t more clear: I meant select the paragraph and choose Break Link to Style from the Paragraph Styles palette menu. That’s like applying “no style” to it.
oh! good to know! thanks!
Great tip, David. You just saved me a bunch of time. Thanks!
I’ve run into this problem as well. I start ID CS2 and most of my fonts aren’t activated, though according to the system AND Fontbook, they are. Simple runaround fix? Quit ID and restart the program, voila… the fonts are there.
I have a different prob. I have created a few docs, using text boxes in adobe photoshop. When I then place them in Indesign, they become distorted and pixelated. Does anyone know the reason why?
Rosa, the only way to get vector (non-bitmapped) fonts from Photoshop to InDesign is to save the file as PDF. To see them at high-quality in ID, choose View > Display Quality > High Quality.
Thank you David, worked great, saved me lots of time trying to re-do them
I’m running Vista and I was having problems with InDesign CS3 recognising Arial Narrow. I figured if it was not recognising that font, there were bound to be others… so I thought I’d try something and create a shortcut to C:\Windows\Fonts in the InDesign fonts folder, and guess what? It works like a charm… anyone have any idea why this might be?
Thank you! Thank you! I stumbled upon your site after struggling with this very issue for a week. I tried it and it worked immediately.
Exactly how do you create a shortcut to C:\Windows\Fonts? Is it just like a shortcut I would create on my desktop, for example?
Charlie, yes, same thing. Right-button-drag the Fonts folder icon…