InDesign’s Font Manager
Almost everyone who has used InDesign has encounted the dialog box shown below. It means that one or more of the fonts in the document you just opened are missing. You have a choice here: You can ignore the problem by clicking OK, or you can fix the problem now. Clicking OK will not change the file and will allow you to work even with the missing font(s). Normally, unless you’ve turned off this feature in Composition Preferences, substituted fonts are highlighted in your document with a pink color.
Missing Fonts
To fix the problem now, click the Find Font button. This opens up the Find Font dialog box. This is InDesign’s manager for working with fonts—one of the essential resources we use when creating layouts. In this dialog box, you can identify all the fonts used in the document, or missing fonts in the document or in placed graphic files. You can do a complete Find and Replace for files in the InDesign file. At any time, you can open this dialog box by choosing Type > Find Fonts to check on the status of your fonts.
Find Font dialog
Within this dialog, you can view the fonts in the document in a scrolling list. InDesign uses the yellow alert icon to indicate missing fonts. It also indicates the type of each document font: A blue-and-white “O” for OpenType fonts, a red “a” for PostScript fonts, and a blue “TT” for TrueType fonts. A couple of other symbols appears for fonts in graphics. In the screen capture below, the PostScript font Myriad-Bold is found in a graphic. The unknown font Arcadian is also found in a graphic, but is missing. InDesign can’t tell what kind of font it is. When one of these fonts is highlighted, the Find First button shown above turns into a Find Graphic button so you can search for the graphic where the font is located.
Fonts in Graphics
To replace the fonts within the InDesign file, you can use the familiar buttons to the right: Find First, Change, Change All, and Change/Find, which function similar to the way they work in the Find/Change dialog box. However, be aware that you cannot use this dialog box to change the fonts in any placed graphics. To do this, you’ll need to open any of those graphics in the native application they were created in.
A powerful but little noticed feature was added in InDesign CS3: The Redefine Style When Changing All checkbox (circled above). Checking this allows you not only to change the fonts in the document but in all the styles using those fonts which are defined in the document as well. In InDesign CS2 and earlier, you have to manually go through each of your styles do make those changes!
Also, beginners may miss the More Info button which I also circled in the illustration above. Clicking this button opens a powerful Info section. This gives you a raft of information about each font. Select one of the fonts in the list and you can view the PostScript name, the version, any font restrictions, where the font is located in your system, how many characters are used, what pages they’re on, and a list of the styles using that font!
More Info
Finally, don’t miss the Reveal in Finder/Reveal in Explorer button on the right. Added in InDesign CS2, it allows you to click on a font in the list and be taken to that font within the Macintosh Finder or in Windows Explorer.
Great tip regarding the “Redefine Style” option!
(little typo: 5th paragraph has “Refine Style” instead of Redefine Style”)
regards,
MAJ
What if the I get the alert that I’m missing a font, but it is actually on my computer located in the windows/font area? I use Indesign CS3 and recently upgraded to a new computer and operating system. The font appeared and worked fine on my XP system, but now on my Vista system Indesign claims it’s missing.
Thanks, MAJ, for letting me know about the typo. I fixed it.
Terri, I’m not an expert with fonts on Windows. I seem to recall that Windows Vista handles PostScript fonts differently, but I’m not really sure. You could try placing it in InDesign’s own Fonts folder inside the Application folder (wherever that is in Vista, can’t tell you, I’m afraid).
In case I open an old document with fonts missing I’d love to see information in which folder font was last time it was still found. Or at least name of the font file. This would be very helpful when searching for some odd rarely used who-knows-where-I-got-it fonts.
I like the concept of “Refine” Style When Changing All. It sounds so elegant.
I’m with Sandee — so let’s start canvassing Adobe for a “Refine Style” function! :-)
And there’s certainly a lot of unrefined and ugly styles that could use it!
You mentioned working on a file with a substituted font. I don’t recommend working too much on a file with fonts missing as the size and spacing of fonts change, which can lead to a lot of rework when the original font is back in the file.
What about InDesign’s propensity (on PCs at least) to occasionally list as present typefaces (usually Times or a variant thereof) that are not actually in the document? Find font doesn’t get rid of them, even though it admits there are zero instances of x font in the doc.
Luke,
InDesign does do that occasionally. First to check to make sure that it’s not really included in a style or in [Basic Paragraph]. If not, it’s what I call a “phantom font,” perhaps used earlier in the document. Try saving it as an INX (InDesign Exchange) document, and reopening it. I find that that often gets rid of phantom fonts.
Thanks Steve.
I’ll give the inx option a shot. It’s not that the phantoms cause any problems — it’s just an aesthetic thing — nice to have a tidy document.
Luke, check out this post, which also discusses missing fonts (especially my comment #24).