Participating Frequently

Question

Why "The "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid" Font is not available" error

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 1, 2018
3 replies
5884 views

I am getting a "

The "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid" Font is not available.

"Times New Roman" will be used in this session."

error. I have installed that font. I double-checked too. I restarted Windows (10 Pro) even.

It's been awhile since I used FM regularly. How do I track this down and fix it. Even better, how to I prevent that automatic substitution from being made, and if I can't, how to I locate the paragraph and character styles that have been converted automatically--without touching any that might actually be using Times New Roman--and change them to the correct font?

fonts

This topic has been closed for replies.

C

chuck_agariAuthor

Participating Frequently

Well, I "succeeded" in the fact that I was able to get rid of the font replacement errors.

Among my many Google search results, I finally ran into this article: Troubleshooting font-related errors in FrameMaker (2015 release) | Adobe Content Corner

Because everything else had not worked, I decided to try unchecking the "Remember Missing Font Names" option. I then opened every file in the book, accepted the replace, then saved. When I opened the file again, no error. (Iwas also able to do a book-level action, and I'm guessing it's because FM was able to open all the files without error.)

I debated an alternative solution, where I would just open all of the chapter files whenever I needed to do any work, but I thought that sub-optimal for the long term.

I'm OK with this because the substitution made doesn't materially affect anything. I still have no clue why it was made, and I'm annoyed that I can't figure out the root cause. This feels like a Band-Aid, but it got me working. I always prefer solving the root cause over Band-Aids, but in this case, it seems way to hoary, especially with the additional layers of VM and MacOS mixed in, so I will move forward and thank all for their ideas.

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

Have you reached out to the Font Awesome team at https://fontawesome.com/support ?

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

S

Stefan Gentz

Legend

To see which fonts are used in a document and where they are used, you can open the Fonts pod in FrameMaker (> View > Pods > Fonts). The font pod lists all fonts used in the currently open document. When you double-click on a font name, the "Replace Font" pod opens listing all the locations where the font is used.

Does FM list "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid" at all in the Font drop-down in the Character/Paragraph Designer?

C

chuck_agariAuthor

Participating Frequently

HI Stefan,

Well that's weird. I decided to try and install just a single font from scratch, the specific "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid" from the Font Awesome type family. I still get the "font unavailable" message when I open a .FM file. I looked at the font list, and that font appears, and it no longer has an asterisk next to it. I double-clicked, as you suggested, and found all the instances in a file. The thing is, it now looks like the font is being used. (The person who originally created this document used this font for some icons to go with notes, warning, etc., and created some block on the file's Reference page, so I can actually go right there and see. Until today, I'd see a Times New Roman question mark, and now I see the correct icons. So it appears that the font is now being "seen" correctly by FrameMaker. It seems like I should be OK going forward. So I save and close the file, and then re-open it to double-check. I get a slightly different message: "

The "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid" Font is not available.

"Font Awesome 5 Free Solid Heavy" will be used in this session."

To be fair, I seem to be OK with this because the icons are still there and they do not seem to change anything in the layout, but when I save and close and then re-open to check again, I still get the same message. This may end up being a minor annoyance, rather than the change to Times New Roman that was unusable before, and I may try to tweak my installed fonts a bit more, but I've made a bit of progress by uninstalling all the Font Awesome fonts from Windows and target-installing only specifi9c ones.

C

chuck_agariAuthor

Participating Frequently

I did some search on the Internet, but can't find the font "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid Heavy", only "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid".

But when you create a new FM file (using "Font Awesome 5 Free Solid") and save it as MIF, you'll see some interesting lines in a text editor:

<FPlatformName `W.Font Awesome 5 Free Solid.R.900'>
   <FFamily `Font Awesome 5 Free Solid'>
   <FVar `Regular'>
   <FWeight `Heavy'>

The font weight seems to be always "Heavy".

Maybe someone else can put together the remaining pieces of the puzzle.

Here's the thing that frustrates me--and I'll bet plenty of others: I've been using FrameMaker off and on for nearly 25 years, and an issue I've encountered over and over and over and over is this font substitution issue. From new systems that don't (yet) have necessary fonts to font file names that are just one character off, not only is font management within the program still a PITA, the program pretty much does what it pleases, does not communicate clearly what it does, and makes it damn difficult to find and fix font issues.

And it really shouldn't be that hard--if only the Adobe development team for FrameMaker was actually focused on user needs. And the basics really aren't that hard; you just need something such as:

This FrameMaker file/book uses [font name/font file name}, which cannot be found on this system.

- Substitute [font choice] temporarily (IOW, don't save this when the file is saved)

- Add [font choice] to the paragraph/character definition (sort of like CSS)

- Don't do anything now. I'll fix it later

25 years..........

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

Sounds like a font availability issue in Win.

FA has a number of different fonts available now. Are you able to use that character in other apps?

If you'd like to send me a sample file, DM me and we'll arrange to share a file for me to open on my side.

-Matt

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

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