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matthewn43692242
Inspiring
June 28, 2019
Question

Installed Fonts Not Updating in Illustrator

  • June 28, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 3577 views

I've posted about this problem before but this issue is still not solved & I've not been able to find a solution in this forum or anywhere. Allow me to clarify.

The issue is not just about the font menus but about text rendered with any font not updating in the entire document & actually across unlimited documents after unlimited numbers of app restarts and system restarts. I assume this can be fixed because I have proper behavior on one machine & improper behavior on another.

I build fonts. I use Illustrator as one of many apps in which I test the fonts as part of my workflow. The problem I am having is that fonts DO NOT UPDATE in Illustrator after I have deleted the old, installed copy & installed an updated version of the font with changes. If I change some characters or kerning or font names or any other characteristic of the font & reinstall Illustrator still shows me the old version of the font (whichever version it first saw). The changes to the font file are not reflected in the doc or in the menus no matter how many times I start a whole new doc or restart Illustrator or restart the system.

I want to make clear that on my other machine which has the exact same OS & the exact same version of Illustrator the behavior is totally different. That machine behaves the same as every other version of Illustrator I've had on every machine since the 90's. If I update an installed font file the changes show up immediately in any open doc with no need to quit, make a new doc or restart. Illustrator picks up the new copy of the font immediately with no action on my part and any changes made to the font are reflected in the doc.

One new thing I can add is that this seems to be true of the entire Adobe CC suite while it does not effect any of my other apps.

I can not get my new machine to behave this way after trying many, many fixes & investing many hours of research into the issue over the course of months. There must be some sort of setting or preference that is causing this. I would appreciate some help from an ACP please.

{Renamed by MOD}

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1 reply

Srishti Bali
Community Manager
Srishti BaliCommunity Manager
Community Manager
July 5, 2019

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing your observations with us. As per your post, you used one font on the file, then you deleted the font and installed the latest version of the same font. Now Illustrator gives you missing for error? Is that correct?

If yes, then this is the expected behavior. A newer version of the font is installed and the older version is missing. Illustrator will give you the missing font dialog box, which is an indication that Illustrator is unable to find the existing font as it is deleted but it gives you the option to replace it with the new one.

Once you replace the old font with the newer version it will not give you this error.

For more details, you can also refer to this help article: Using fonts in Illustrator.

If that's not the case at your end, I would request if you can share a few more details like:

  • OS (exact version of Windows/MAC)
  • Version of Illustrator
  • Step by step workflow or a small video of the issue.

Regards,

Srishti

M
matthewn43692242Author
Inspiring
September 17, 2019

Hello, sorry if I was not clear enough. I'll try again. The font is not missing. It's never missing. That is not the issue at all. Obviously if I remove an installed font then try to use it in Illustrator it would show as missing... 

 

Let me explain again.

 

I'm working in Illustrator CC 2019 under Mac OS 10.14.6

 

I am a font developer. I test the fonts that I am building in Illustrator. I will work on a font, export an installable .otf file, place it into the font directory on my system & test it out in Illustrator. Oncce I have done more work on the font & want to test again I will delete the older version from the fonts directory & install the new version in it's place. The new version has the exact same font name, style name, version number etc.

 

Illustrator will still show me the older version. Not only will the font menus still display the old version but any documents using the font will still display text rendered in the old version. This happens not only in Adobe Illustrator but in my entire CC 2019 suite on this particular machine. It continues no matter how many times I delete & remake the document, malke a new document, restart Illustrator or restart the computer. 

 

Again I should explain... this is not the expected behavior, is not the behavior I've ever experienced on any previous machine & is not the behavir I get on my alternate mac or on my mac laptop which are all using the same OS & AI version number.

 

On those machines (any every machine I've had in the past) any changes to any aspect of any installed font are picked up immediately, even in an open document font menus & rendered text will change immediately, in real time if I remove the old version of a font & install the new version.

 

With all of this being true I assume there is some sort of setting or preferrence that is causing this behavior. It's a big problem & even now, months later I still have no solution.

 

Thank you for your help. I really need to find an answer.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 17, 2019
If it works on a different machine then maybe your system setup is the issue? Maybe the font caches have gone corrupt and you might need to have them rebuilt.
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