Indesign: Fonts are temporarily unavailable from creative cloud" on Mac

[jrusso27]

Hello, I am getting the message "Fonts are temporarily unavailable from creative cloud" when clicking "Find More" from the fonts pane. Here is the background, 1. I only have a license for InDesign 2020 not all the apps, 2. My license started yesterday, Oct. 12. 3. I have turned on Auto-activate Adobe Fonts from Edit-Preferences-File Handling, 4. I am logged in to Creative Cloud and Creative Cloud is open, 5. I am logged in to InDesign. Can someone please help me understand how I can get Adobe fonts to appear when I click "Find More" from the fonts pane? Thank you.

[jrusso27]

Fonts are now showing up.

[alanar86815613 · Accepted solution]

I was having this problem, but simply opening the Creative Cloud desktop app and letting it talk to the computer while using InDesign was the answer. Here's how I'm reasoning it out.

First, since fonts are no longer "installed" but instead are "activated" it seems like the font information is stored in the cloud, not your computer.

Second, the individual CC program is not communicating with the cloud in such a way as to access your fonts. It is not meant to. So, just because you have InDesign open, are connected to the internet, have all your preferences set up properly, and are fully updated, does not meant you have access to your activated fonts!

Third, there is ONE APP that does give your other CC apps access to your activated fonts. And that is the Creative Cloud desktop app. So open it up, let it run, and **POOF** your other CC apps now have access to your activated fonts. (Apparently there's some way to tell the Creative Cloud Desktop app to automatically open at start-up.)

Don't want to deal with this? Purchase your important, favorite, or frequently used fonts separately and actually install them on your computer the old-fashioned way. Just know you can't do it through Adobe CC because that is not how the system is designed. It's meant to be an efficient cloud-based thingy.

What they should really change is the error message. It is SO unhelpful. It should say, "These fonts are not available because you need to access them through the cloud so OPEN YOUR CREATIVE CLOUD APP!" Certainly the instruction to "enable" the fonts meant nothing to me. And the buttons offered do not appear actually to have any effect when clicked, other than channeling all one's documents into an extremely small pool of boring fonts that always seem to be available (are installed on one's computer?)

Good luck!