Missing Fonts

Ok same problem here. I needed arial narrow bold super bad so what I did is install Font Xplorer (props to Mr. White) and right click install on arial narrow bold.

It showed up in illustrator.

word.

Hey All
Read this post from a different thread and then my post #11 above:

"A little update on my specific problem which has been resolved, in the course of which I discovered some strange stuff that remains unresolved. It seems like when InDesign generates its font list and the Find Font dialogue box, it gets its information on what fonts are available from PostScript files, not necessarily the fonts themselves. To make a long story short, THIS was the cause of my problem.

Here's where we stood: All InDesign documents my coworker and I attempted to open that contained Arial fonts (regular, italic, bold, bold italic) came up with an error message that these fonts were missing. They were not, the font files were right where they always had been and were even packaged with each document. Some documents were originally created by myself by copying/pasting PageMaker text and graphics, others were just brand new documents with brand new text and graphics.

Come to find out, we had a corrupted Helvetica.ttf font on both our computers that somehow got itself associated with outdated Arial PostScript info. These Arial PostScript imposters were being displayed under Arial in InDesign both in the font list and in Find Font. The only way to see that they were being generated NOT by the Arial.ttf file(s), but in actuality the Helvetic.ttf file, was in the path information in Find Font.

I did some testing once I discovered the discrepancy, making new files with these Arial imposters. Sure enough, no font problems for myself or my coworker. Then I packaged the test files, trying to recreate the same situation as the original documents that, once out of my computer, returned font errors. This time, instead of packaging the Arial.ttf files and then choking for one or both of us, InDesign bundled the Helvetic.ttf file and everything still worked OK on both computers. Very odd.

In any event, we gave the corrupted Helvetic.ttf file the boot and installed a brand new version, crossing our fingers because before when we had attempted to replace the old Arial PostScript files with the newer/real ones (something that we couldnt do consistently, for unknown reasons) replacing the fonts caused massive problems with a lot of text in a lot of tables. This time there was no rocky transition. Once Helvetic.ttf was gone, InDesign loaded up the correct Arial PostScript files and gave us no error messages about fonts being missing. This is interesting, given that we had deleted the font that originally created all the instances of Arial in these documents, but not so interesting if InDesign is seeking out PostScript data, not actual font file names, when it decides what fonts are available for use.

I still do no know how the Helvetica file could have been corrupted to return this particular result or why the problem was able to jump from one computer to another when no files were exchanged at any time this was the real horror, files that no one but myself had ever touched and were nowhere else but my computer were suddenly reporting missing fonts.

Kudos must go to two programs, Font Xplorer, which tipped me off to multiple versions of font PostScript files hanging around, and Font Doctor, which identified the Helvetica font as corrupted. InDesign was a help in that it was the only program which displayed both the PostScript file info and the font file path (otherwise Id never have known Helvetic.ttf was generating the Arial PostScripts), but if it wasnt so picky, none of these problems would likely have surfaced in the first place, soo.. "

I didn't have Helvetica installed and since I deleted about 200 font files I don't know which one(s) were corrupted, but the result was the same. You can delete the Adobefnt*.lst files and reboot all you want but until you get rid of the corrupted fonts, it won't help.

Try temporarily deleting the Arial Narrow fonts again and the AdobeFnt*.lst files, too. Reboot, launch InDesign, and reinstall the Arial Narrow fonts.

Re-reading Thomas's post I think it might be important to regenerate the font cache file before installing the Arial Narrow.

thanks, peter. i deleted the files and rebooted. no dice.

Search for and delete all Adobefnt*.lst files. Don not delete the Adobefnt.db file.

Hi, i'm having the same trouble (with InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, and Photoshop CS2) of Arial Narrow embedding itself in the Arial font list with no way to access Arial Narrow Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic. However, I am running XP (Home version, had the same trouble with Pro version, both with SP2), not Vista, so this is not exclusively a Vista problem. As others have noted, all is well with the MS Office suite and other programs, so this is definitely a CS2/3 issue with the MS XP/Vista operating systems. (At the office I have Windows 2000 and the fonts show up fine with the CS2 suite. This is a pain because I telework so much and keep getting missing font alarms that I can't resolve at home.)

I noticed that all the arial fonts on my home machine list with the Open type icon even tho they have ttf extensions. the fonts at the office were older versions, so i deleted the new ones and installed the old ones from the office, and they show up with the TT icon. Unfortunately, it didn't help. I still don't get Arial Narrow showing up independently on the font list, even after rebooting. Someone suggested deleting the Windows cache files -- i would try that but i don't know where they are. Does rebooting refresh them? i did that with no luck.

Deleting hundreds of fonts and reinstalling programs is not my first choice of game plan; i'm on a tight deadline and don't have time to experiment, was hoping to find a reliable solution that was relatively quick and painless. Silly me? (i cant just change the document designs -- corporate standards use arial narrow. don't get me going on that one.)

If somebody else is in the same pickle, I'd suggest after replacing the fonts, you try deleting the Adobe font cache files rather than reinstalling an entire application. Alternatively, you could remove the "bad" Arial Narrow fonts, launch InDesign, and then put the good/old Arial Narrow fonts back in place.

Regards,

T

Hi Peter
I fixed it!! I read on another forum that corrupted fonts might be being read as arial so I went through and deleted about 250 of the over 400 font files on my system, including the Arial Narrow family. I then installed the older Arial Narrow family from my XP machine. That didn't fix it but then I re-installed Illus. and that did it. I have no idea which were the offending fonts (if that is indeed what the problem was) but somehow it worked.
Thanks so much for your advice and interest.

Al,

Set a restore point before you try this, and then only if you are desperate, because I have no idea what will happen since you can't seem to copy fonts.

Copy the version 2.3 fonts from your XP machine to any folder except the fonts folder. (keep in mind I don't have a Vista machine to look at).

Use Windows to uninstall the Arial Narrow fonts from the file menu in the fonts folder (and I'd REALLY try to copy them to someplace again before doing this).

Reboot, just to be sure the registry gets updated.

Use Windows to install the old versions from the folder where you copied them from XP, using the fonts folder file menu command again.

Reboot.

Check to see if I'm a hero.

Peter

narrow, narrow bold, narrow bold italic = 2.37
narrow italic = 2.30 (copied from XP machine as one of my many fix attempts)