Using Microsoft JhengHei font in Illustrator for Macintosh

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
December 7, 2025
4 replies
602 views

I have the font Microsoft JhengHei, which is a Windows font. I have the font in FontExplorer and it is activated. The font is available in other programs like Word and Pages but does not show in Illustrator. The font file itself is a .ttf file.

How to I make the font available in Illustrator?

Screenshot 2025-12-06 at 4.03.28 PM.png

Type

Correct answer Ton Frederiks

You can also check if in Preferences > Type > Show Font Names in English is checked.

Ton Frederiks

Correct answer

Community Expert

You can also check if in Preferences > Type > Show Font Names in English is checked.

Scott Falkner

Author

Community Expert

That did it. I was able to select the font Microsoft JhengHei in the Type panel. When I turned the option off the font name changes to 微軟正黑體. So the font was always available. Odd that the PDF from Pages needed the text outlined.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Font names in English sould be the default for non CJK installations.

Perhaps the outling is occurring because the fonts can have embedding restrictions.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Soooo.. I copied those fonts from my Win11 install, and they work just fine in Illustrator (also using FontExplorer, btw), although mine did not indicate they were OpenType as yours did.

Screenshot 2025-12-07 at 3.19.59 PM.png

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Scott, what sometimes used to work in the past is to put the misbehaving font in a folder you create with the name Fonts in the Illustrator application folder. That is the first place Illustrator will look for fonts.

Scott Falkner

Author

Community Expert

Update: As I was able to use the font in Pages I did then saved a PDF. Opening the PDF in Illustrator converted the text to outlines. Illustrator really doesn’t want to have anything to do with Microsoft JhengHei.

I just discovered it works in InDesign, too.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded