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Joel Cherney
Community Expert
Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 14, 2022
Answered

Can't select some fonts in Find/Change dropdown

  • July 14, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 288 views

I have a client that makes extensive use of Proxima Nova fonts, includig the Condensed and Extra Condensed variants. These are all installed on my laptop via Adobe Fonts. When I'm working on a translation for this client, they have asked me to only change the non-Latin characters. So, if I have a paragraph of e.g Trad Chinese, they'd like to see only Chinese characters in Noto Sans Chinese, and their name and such in Proxima Nova.  

 

 

So, I either search for a Unicode range with GREP, or set up GREP Styles, to select only Unicode values north of 0100 and apply Noto Sans TC. (In this case, I don't need to distingush between languages, as this document will be 100% Trad Chinese except for "Medicaid" and "ClientName" and the like.)

 

The problem crops up when I try to select the various versions of Proxima Nova. If I try to use the formatting controls in the Find/Change dialog, I often can't select Proxima Nova. If I click on it, it defaults to Proxima Nova Condensed. or Extra Condensed. I think it defaults to whichever of the three font variants was added last, but I haven't yet bothered to nail it down.

 

 

I suspect that this boils down to a font naming convention. But I can't just pop the fonts open in FontLab and fix them, right? My current workflow is cumbersome; I'm deactivating the Condensed and Extra Condensed families temporarily, then performing my Find/Change actions, then deactivating the Nova family and reactivating the Condensed family, and so on. I'm on the road right now, and my connections have been spotty, so relying upon 24/7 access to fonts.adobe.com is unappealing.

 

GREP Styles work a little more consistently than the Find/Change window, but my client's designers don't always use Paragraph Styles, and the one that does so consistently (the one, sigh) has sent me email directly asking me to not alter their paragraph styles and instead use local formatting only for localization work (sigh, again). 

 

So, I have two main questions:

1) Can any of you suggest a temporary duck-tape-and-ziptie workflow that doesn't involve me deactivating and reactivating fonts all the time?

and,

2) To me, this clearly calls for a bug report. Does it sound more like a visit to the InDesign Uservoice, to the Adobe Fonts uservoice, or both?

 

Thanks, in advance!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Joel Cherney

Nope. I haven't used font management software in many years. 

 

I've done a little bit of testing, and it seems to boil down to some kind of sign-in/account federation issue. I'll be signed in to CC, and it'll look that way in InDesign and Creative Cloud, but then I'll need to deactivate the Extra Condensed family in the airport, so I'll sign into fonts.adobe.com, deactivate the fonts, do some more work, then sleep my laptop. When I open it back up on the plane, none of my Adobe fonts are activated. 

 

This is just an example; I've been through maybe ten different iterations of the same sign-in-and-sign-out rigamarole. So I am convinced that this is not solely because of Proxima Nova, but it's certainly the worst offender. 

2 replies

Joel Cherney
Community Expert
Joel CherneyCommunity ExpertAuthor
Community Expert
August 31, 2022

Maybe I was wrong about it being account-related? Because now I'm working on a document that has both Garamond and Garamond Premier Pro, and I can't select the Garamond in the font dropdown in the Find Format section. It always defaults to Garamond Premier Pro. Garamond appears three times in the dropdown, but I can't select it. 

 

 

So, I'm feeling somewhat more confident that this is an InDesign bug. Has anyone else here encountered it?

 

 

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 31, 2022

I saw something similar the other day trying to assign All Caps as the case in the Find Formatting dialog. Think I was testing in version 16, but don't remember for sure. I can say that it had noting at all to do with Adobe fonts in the cloud-- I don't use them.

As I recall it seemed to depend on whether there was text selected when I entered the dialog.

Rishabh_Tiwari
Rishabh_Tiwari
Legend
July 19, 2022

Hi @Joel Cherney ,

 

Sorry for the delay in response. Do you use the Font Explorer plugin? If yes, does disabling that plugin resolve the issue? Let us know how it goes?

 

Regards

Rishabh

Joel Cherney
Community Expert
Joel CherneyCommunity ExpertAuthorCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 20, 2022

Nope. I haven't used font management software in many years. 

 

I've done a little bit of testing, and it seems to boil down to some kind of sign-in/account federation issue. I'll be signed in to CC, and it'll look that way in InDesign and Creative Cloud, but then I'll need to deactivate the Extra Condensed family in the airport, so I'll sign into fonts.adobe.com, deactivate the fonts, do some more work, then sleep my laptop. When I open it back up on the plane, none of my Adobe fonts are activated. 

 

This is just an example; I've been through maybe ten different iterations of the same sign-in-and-sign-out rigamarole. So I am convinced that this is not solely because of Proxima Nova, but it's certainly the worst offender. 

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