Fonts won't visibly load, but preflight is green. Close the doc and reopen - fonts work again.

[Michael J5]

Hello!

We have a few production machines running macOS Mojave 10.14.6 and they were recently updated to InDesign 15.1 for testing. This bug appears to be random...

When a document is open, none of the fonts will visibly load (text is a mess with the red tint behind it all), but when you go to Type > Find/Replace it shows there are no font issues. Preflight is green and it all fonts listed are "OK".  Now the interesting thing is if you immediately close the document and reopen it everything looks absolutly fine.  When the same document is opened hours later the problem repeats itself.

I should also note we do not use Adobe fonts.  Fonts are either loaded into Font Book, and/or they are loaded from the Document Fonts folder.  The document I've been using for testing was created in 2019, and now we are making changes to it.

Things I've tried:

Clearing font caches in macOS

Clearing the macOS Library Caches

Deleting the AdobeFnt.lst file in the Documents fonts folder

Repackaging the job

Turning off the Adobe Fonts service located in the Creative Cloud app

I was able to replicate this bug by dragging the Documents fonts folder elsewhere, open the document, then close it.  Then I move the Document Fonts folder back where it belongs.  Open the document again and the fonts don't load and preflight says everything is fine. We did not encounter this bug until 15.1.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[Laubender]

Hi Michael,

could you check another thing: If the fonts in the Document fonts folder are also installed with the system.

Could be a hint for a bug perhaps, if that's true.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Michael J5]

Hi Uwe,

The fonts that are in the Document Fonts folder are also installed with the system. Hope that helps.

[flaming1]

"…if you immediately close the document and reopen it everything looks absolutly fine.  When the same document is opened hours later the problem repeats itself."

We have had this problem on our Macs for some time – for a couple of versions of InDesign. I'd always put it down to our font management software being slow to activate the font (we use Suitcase), but I guess InDesign is playing a part in the issue.

It is quickest to do what you say – open a file, close it then re-open the file. Fonts will always be loaded on re-opening the file. However, in our case we also find that if we just leave the file for a while the fonts will eventually activate.

[Michael J5]

We havn't used a font management program like Suitecase Fusion for a few years now. We rely on Apple's Font Book for loading fonts. Up until this recent update, it was a non-issue.  I'll try leaving the document open for awhile to see if the fonts eventally activate.

Update: Left the document open for a few hours and the fonts did not reactivate on their own. 

[flaming1]

Something else that often works to trigger the fonts to load for me is to place the cursor in the middle of the text and just type a character, or space. That usually triggers that particular text block's font to load. Sometimes it triggers all the fonts in the document to load, but most times it just fixes the individual text block.

This may or may not help with troubleshooting the bug.

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Michael,

so the fact that the fonts are also installed in the system, not only are present in Document fonts folder, are pointing to a bug, I think. You should report exactly that at InDesign uservoice:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Michael J5]

Thank you for the link!

[Michael J5]

Direct link @ InDesign uservoice:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/40790290-fonts-won-t-vi...