Getting InDesign to See Your Fonts
Susan 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…
Hi, I am working off windows xp platform, using CS2. I have no problems seeing Arial Narrow, but my fellow work mates using the same versions etc can not see Arial Narrow in the ‘replace with’ drop down menu. Any solutions??? We have tried creating a shortcut to C:\Windows\Fonts in the InDesign fonts folder, also re-creating the Adobe font list files. Not thing is making this font appear in the Indesign font list!!!Please help!
I am also having the same issue with CS3. We have a machine with it installed and some of the fonts do not seem to appear on it. I have tried some of the ideas above but to no avail. Does anyone know anything that is worth trying?
Had this problem and putting the font in ID’s font folder solved the “seeing” part. Now when I export to PDF, the font in question is there but appears to have wacky kerning which is not present in the ID file. Any ideas?
I appreciate all the suggestions, but I’ve tried ‘em all, and nothing is working! CS3 can’t see Arial Narrow (and its variations), and I have a doc for which I need it! What’s even weirder: CS2 DOES see it. What’s THAT all about? Any other suggestions?
@Katlyne: I wish I had another suggestion. Sounds very strange. I wonder if the font is corrupted somehow. Perhaps try to install a “clean” version?
Thanks so much, David–it worked! I completely deleted all versions of Arial Narrow (I’m on Windows XP Professional) from the system Fonts folder, re-installed the fonts from a stashed folder (different date on the files), closed down and rebooted, and IT WORKED! Yeah!
Katlyne,
That is a known issue with new versions of Arial Narrow. You discovered the fix…replace it with an older version.
I believe the version that has the problem ships with Office 2007 and you need to find a machine with Office 2003 and copy the fonts from there.
I have tried all these fixes for getting Indesign CS3 to see Arial narrow…. NOTHING is working….
It works on my other computer but that one is otherwise broken.
Any other ideas?
I have replaced Arial Narrow fonts in the windows font folder.
I have created a link to the font folder in the indesign font folder
I have copied the arial narrow font into the indesign font folder.
Help!! Running Windows XP…
@Chanda: Read through this:
http://indesignsecrets.com/hotfix-corrects-arial-narrow-problem-on-windows.php
You saved my day! On Monday morning certain weights of our most used font stopped showing itself in InDesign CS3, though was available in CS2, Quark, and Word. Spent hours replacing, reinstalling, ad infinitum. I put a copy in the Indd font folder as you suggested, and voila! It’s working again. Thank you!
(Mac) I had this issue as well. Not only were all my fonts ‘missing’, but the only ones I had available to use were Apple’s Braille and Symbol fonts (wtf?).
The solution was to open CS3 from the Applications folder, instead of getting it to launch by trying to open the document. I suspect it looks for the fonts folder in the path it starts up from, so if you launch it by opening a document, it’ll look for the fonts folder in the same folder as the document – which more than likely won’t be there.
Anyway, that’s what worked for me.
i’m having problem with my symbol.ttf font. I’m using winxp indesign cs2. it shows as symbol regular in my machine but on the other machine it shows as symbol medium. i’m using the same font file. please help… don’t know what to do anymore.
Great article, solved my problem in InDesign CS2 with arial narrow bold ttf and arial narrow italic ttf. Uninstalled my 2008 versions of the font, installed newer 2009 versions through the Windows Control Panel, rebooted for good measure. InDesign still could not find either font. Based on this article copied the same fonts into the fonts folder in the InDesign installation folder and it immediately found the fonts after reopening the document. Many thanks!!
I’m also having the exact same problem with Arial Black. I can see Italics, but not other versions of Arial Black. The OTF fonts appear missing and the TTF fonts are there but In-Design can’t seem to see them…
Wow, this is one of my favorite tips in a long time. I work so often with other people’s files, and their fonts. Being able to just make an alias of their collected fonts and put it into InDesign’s fonts folder has solved so many problems for me. Now I don’t try to manage “OPF” (other people’s fonts) — I just keep them with the job folder, alias them as I need them, then dump the alias.
I’m not able to copy/paste fonts into the InDesign Fonts folder. The Paste option is greyed out. I’m at the Administrator level but this isn’t working. Any ideas?
Not sure. Why copy/paste? Does drag not work? (I assume you’re on Windows; copy/paste files doesn’t work on a mac, last time I checked.)
Hello,
I want to know how to add a word in each page of my document in InDesign. The word is “Draft” for example and I want it in the background of the doc. However, I don’t know how to do it.
Please help.
Thank you,
Abdelmajid.
@Abdelmajid: This is a great question for the forum (you can creat a new topic by clicking Forums in the nav bar above). In the meantime, I suggest putting the text on a master page; that’s where all repeating elements should go.
I haven’t gotten InDesign to see all my Windows fonts yet, but I did resolve a problem with Arial Black. It’s installed in Windows, but ID can’t see it under that name. However, “Black” is a type style for “Arial”, and that’s how I get to it. So in some cases, ID only lists the family name, but not all the styles.
We are using CS3. Up until about 1 week ago when our lead designer’s computer started going nutso with repeated different crashes. She had to repeatedly restart InDesign with deleting her preferences. We kept a log and found that it was not the same files or graphics and so knew we needed to create a different user. Anyway, after creating a new user, we now have font problems. She has several fonts that are in many of her advertisements that have T1 fonts in them. I have found the fonts and put them back on her system and the files SAY they are T1 fonts BUT they do not say T1 in the name of the font which they did when she created the files… SO, the fonts are all pinked out. Any ideas about what I should do to make the fonts once again have the (T1) after the name of the font?????
@Carabeth: I wonder if the fonts have become corrupted, which can cause all kinds of other indirect problems.
i realised what was the problem with MY font not displaying rightly. my language toolbar was set to Japanese instead of US English!! ack.
Missing fonts in indesign, load as medium when suitcase sees them as plain? This happens frequently with times & helvetica. I’m using suitcase 12.1.7 and mac os 10.4.11. with any version of indesign.
w00t! This suggestion cured my Arial Black problem.
David Blatner FTW!!
Thank you! I just spent 2.5 hours trying to figure out how to get Helvetica Neue Cond – not part of the adobe font – onto my system. I had successfully deleted the .dfont, but neither Font Book or Suitcase would recognize it. I really didn’t want to spend $$$$ on the Open Type version of Helvetica Neue.
This simple fix works!
Obviously using ID’s fonts folder is a workable workaround. But, has ID recognise this being bug?
We are using CS3 and having problems with Helvetica TT vs T1.
We’re using CS4 and Font Agent Pro. ID seems to look for font first in the Library – fonts before Font Agent Pro (discovered this by using Reveal in Finder in Find Font). This means I cannot utilize FAP use of libraries, etc. How do I set up ID to go to FAP first to look for fonts or is this even possible? Help
As far as T1 fonts are concerned, when I upgraded to a 64 bit Windows machine and installed CS3, it no longer recognized my T1 fonts, even though they were in the system font folder and recognized by Microsoft Office. This was never a problem on a 32 bit Windows XP machine.
Long story short, placing copies of the T1 fonts in the InDesign font folder solved the problem. When I upgraded to CS5, same problem, same solution.
I don’t think this is a bug so much as the ugly reality that old equipment/software just doesn’t play especially well with new equipment/software and require tweaks and workarounds, if you are lucky.
Am using InDesign CS4 and also having a problem with fonts. Arial Narrow family is not recognized in InDesign. I’ve tried the technique of loading it to InDesign folder but it says: “the folder is write-protected or used by another program.” In CS3, there’s no problem loading the fonts. Please help. Thanks
@clets: Sounds like you have a permissions problem on your computer; nothing specifically to do with InDesign.
THANK YOU! This worked perfectly!
I have two questions…
1. I work at a small publishing company and we recently installed a version and image browser-tracking system called XINET. When we did this, some of our font files got corrupted. When this happened, we installed uncorrupted font files in each of our computers (in our font library folder) and they work fine when we open some Indesign files but they are not recognized when we open other Indesign files which seems strange to me. Do you have some explanation for this? Shouldn’t the fonts be recognized by every file?
Finally, we installed them in the Indesign Font folder and that worked, but I still would like to know what happened.
2. Since we are a large team, do you recommend:
• working with fonts right from the server
• installing the fonts in each computer
• using font book or other font managing suite?
Mary, those are great questions but I’m afraid not enough people will see them, buried here in the comments list. You might consider copying and pasting your comment as a new forum post, where a lot of helpful people hang out: http://indesignsecrets.com/forum
In CS5, I cannot find Arial Narrow fonts. What is the solution? These fonts worked fine in CS4. Do I need to buy new fonts? If so, what is the best format to buy – True Type or Open Fact Type?
Help – this is really slowing my production updates within existing documents using Arial Narrow.
Thanks!
Lynn
Hi Lynn,
Have a look at this: http://indesignsecrets.com/hotfix-corrects-arial-narrow-problem-on-windows.php
I am having the same issue as some of the others with Arial Black regular not being seen by InDesign CS5 on a PC. When I was using CS3 it was no problem. I have tried putting the font into the InDesign font folder and then restarting the program but it still isn’t seeing Arial Black regular, only Arial Black italic. Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
Hi everybody,
I just discovered this site trying to solve the Helvetica duplicate type issue. I just bought a new (leftover) Mac Pro (from a hot rodded 10 year old G4) and am reinstalling my old software. I ran CS3 and never even thought about type issues with it. Now with 10.6.3, I’m having the same issues a lot of other people are. I was all excited to read about installing fonts into the InDesign font folder until I discovered CS3 doesn’t have a font folder. I’ve screwed around with this thing for too long now without getting any work done, so just to save my own sanity at this point, I just substituted the few of Helvetica Neue fonts for Univers. I know it’s not an ideal solution, but it works for right now so I can get this ad out! Maybe I’m old school, buy I’ve always likes Univers anyway.
Great Forum everybody!
@Laura, the problem with Arial Black is addressed in a MS hotfix for XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959334
Text that has the font set to Arial Black and the font style set to bold may change so that the font is set to Arial Black and the font style is set to Italic when you open the document on a computer that is running Windows XP
Thank you for telling me about the font folder!!!
LOVE YOU…Awesome and so easy just spent an hour or two trying to get my arial narrow fonts to work and your simple tip fixed it in a second. Thanks for the post.
Hello, we have two mac pro machines both running indesign cs5.
When copying the file to the other computer and trying to work on it on there we get the message about missing fonts.
The font in question is the Impact one.
I have made sure that the system/library/fonts folder in both Macs has the same impact fonts but still no luck with opening the file. Would be thankful for any ideas!