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Question

True Type / Postscript font changes by Adobe Causing Workflow Nightmares

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 10, 2022
8 replies
5353 views

Adobe phasing out the True Tye and Postscript fonts on Creative Cloud has created a huge nightmare for our company. We were using Museo Sans Rounded as part of our corporate branding, and this font has been used on THOUSANDS of our files for years.

Now, Adobe has phased out the True Type version of this font, and replaced it with an Open Type font. Making this change itself isn't the problem. The problem is that Adobe has provided no simple, streamlined way to switch to using the Open Type font of the same name. All of the True Type fonts that were used previously have had their name appended with (OTF) at the end, and show up as missing.

After speaking with Adobe support, my only course of action is to go into EACH FILE and manually find and replace EACH FONT (and every one of the lovely subsets) one by one. On THOUSANDS...of...files. There is currently no bulk action, or script provided that can point these fonts to the new font asset on Creative Cloud.

Ironically, if I drag and drop my shared library assets from Creative Cloud into a blank document...these sync up to the Open Type font seamlessly. So the issue seems to be with any previously placed assets--even those who originally were placed from the Creative Cloud libraries themselves.

I am going out...of...my...mind!! Files that were otherwise ready to go are now linked to dozens of InDesign assets that ALL need to have their fonts individually updated. And since I needed to update this font on the master page template used to make the page frame on EVERY file, every linked file now shows as needing to be updated too. And...because these fonts are missing...opening up each one gives me a nice looong look at a spinning wheel while it opens and tries to resolve just how many missing font instances there are.

I sent a screenshot of what I see when I open what WAS a fully updated and ready to go file:

30 pages long, 28 modified links, and 79 font errors (and that's just in the 30 page file itself, not counting the missing fonts in the linked files).

If anyone knows a scripting option that could handle this in bulk, or some method I'm not aware of, please share.

This topic has been closed for replies.

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

Update: InDesign 17.1 update has not resolved this issue for me.

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @Marketing1918,

Sorry to hear that. Would it be possible for you to package the InDesign document, including links & Fonts, upload it on Google Drive or any similar service and share the download with me via DM? We'll check at our end.

I will be looking forward to the file.

Regards,

Anshul Saini

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

Thank you for the reply! I sent a link to the packaged file in DM.

For others following this issue, packaging the file had interesting results. When I opened the INDD file from the package, the Museo Fonts were identified as missing by InDesign. When I opened the IDML file, these fonts synchronized with Adobe fonts (though, each font was listed a crazy number of times in the find font dialog)

INDD

IDML

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

Also, for anyone researching or experiencing this issue:

I looked at an InDesign file that was one of our original branding templates from 2015. This file used the Museo Sans Rounded OpenType Type 1 font activated from Adobe Fonts. As you can see from the packaged instructions from this file from 2015, these fonts were OpenType Type 1 fonts that were synced.

When I opened this InDesign file, Museo Sans Rounded did not show up as missing, and the font synchronized with the Museo Sans Rounded OpenType True Type font on CC. The difference with this file? I hadn't used this font within any defined Character or Paragraph styles. It had just the basic paragraph style applied, with a manual font override. (See styles on the screenshot? It's blank, and the style count is 0.)

Compared to the font info panel on a document with the font missing. The font was applied to 17 styles, and now has (OTF) appended to the end of the font name. (No, it is not a different font).

This seems consistent with the fact that I can drag and drop creative cloud library assets using this font into a blank document (with no pre-defined paragraph or character styles) and have no font warning. If I drop the same asset into a document that has the styles defined, the font shows up as missing.

@Anshul_Saini -- are character and paragraph styles related to the missing font issue that has been fixed in the prerelease? It would be helpful to share information about this bug with support technicians so they can better determine if a customer's font problem is due to actual Type 1 fonts that are no longer supported, or a bug that is being fixed. TY.

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @Marketing1918,

Sorry about that. The product team is aware of this issue. In the prerelease version, this issue has been fixed. I would request you to please be patient and stay tuned for updates.

Thanks & Regards,

Anshul Saini

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

Thank you @Anshul_Saini. I am very much hoping that you are correct that this problem will be fixed once the update comes out.

I have spoken twice with Adobe support on the phone. They were fairly adamant that my font issue is due to the Postscript / Type 1 fonts being phased out. They explained that the original Museo Sans Rounded OpenType Type 1 font from CC will no longer work, and that my only option is to find and replace the now missing font in all of my files with the "new" Museo Sans Rounded OpenType True Type font currently on CC.

It seems like there is some conflicting information about this issue, and it's leaving me uncertain about whether or not my problem will be fixed with this update or if I will need to go ahead and replace all these fonts on a large scale. Is a beta version with this update available for download so I can at least test and know if my problem will be fixed when the update comes out? What will happen with the files that I've already replaced the fonts in once this release comes out? TY

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

For anyone also running into issues with this problem, it may be connected to the reported issue at the following post regarding incorrect identification of font type. It's at least worth a read, especially combined with the note from the Adobe End of Life notice for postcript type 1 fonts.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/opentype-font-marked-as-postscript-type-1-font/td-p/12633363

https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/kb/postscript-type-1-fonts-end-of-support.html

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Brainiac

>>Now, Adobe has phased out the True Type version of this font, and replaced it with an Open Type font.

As @BobLevine and @Test Screen Name have mentioned, your TT versions are not from Adobe. Nor will TT fonts stop working in future versions of InDesign.

You only have to worry about Type 1 fonts--they are going away in newer versions of Adobe's software!

A quick search of "Museo Sans Rounded" and found a lot of sites offering it. Are you sure all the computers have the same font installed--from the same company and the same format? For example, there have been numerous posts lately about some computers using Adobe fonts and others using the same name/design font from Google. They may look the same to us, but to the computer they are completely different fonts.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

The font was activated and synchronized from Creative Cloud for our entire team, just like the other primary font that we use in our branding. I'm just going based on what Adobe Support said in our call, and both the tech and floor manager said that other users are also reporting this problem and they have put in requests to the product development teams to find a solution for it. They attributed it to the phasing out of TT and PS fonts, and they mentioned some fonts were affected due to copyright reasons, but it sounded like this was not very common.

I did more troubleshooting last night. For years, this font appeared in the Character panel in InDesign as Museo Sans Rounded. Since this problem began, the font name in our existing files now shows up as Museo Sans Rounded (OTF). We did not do anything to change the name of this font. This name change seems to be why the software can't find the font--because it doesn't exist.

We have used this font in multiple CC shared library assets, which have been used countless times over the past several years by our team without problem. If I drag and drop one of these assets into a previously created file, the asset looks for Museo Sans Rounded (OTF) and the font shows up as missing. The paragraph and character styles in the existing documents are now looking for Museo Sans Rounded (OTF) and can't find the font. If I drag and drop this SAME asset into a new blank document, it looks for Museo Sans Rounded, and no font is missing. The paragraph styles associated with the asset were added to the styles panel and look for the correct font.

So, I went into our template and deleted ALL character, paragraph, and object styles in our template file, saved and closed it, and made a new document from the template. Dragging the CC library asset into this file now works as expected--it is looking for Museo Sans Rounded, and no fonts are missing. The styles that were associated with the library asset were added to the paragraph and character styles panels and point to the correct font.

This doesn't solve the problem with all our existing documents though, and I'm still seeing no other way to fix the existing documents without doing find / replace font manually within each.

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

I looked at the font info for the missing fonts in InDesign (see screenshot). It looks like the missing font is an OpenType Type 1 font. The missing font originated from Creative Cloud fonts, NOT from any other 3rd party. Until this problem started, the font name was Museo Sans Rounded--without the OTF suffix. This font name appears to have changed across thousands of files at the same time

I did a find/replace on the missing font with the "new" version of the font available from Adobe. I took a screenshot of the font properties post-replace. The Font Name and Type are different. The PostScript name and font version is the same. The same font was already replaced in two linked graphics in the document, and shows up on the list as MuseoSansRounded-500.

I then opened up a PDF exported using the same fonts / styles from a few months before the problem began, and attached a screenshot of the font properties from the PDF. We were successfully able to embed this as a Type 1 font a few months ago with no problems, and we have made no changes to fonts on our end.

T

Test Screen Name

Brainiac

Adobe never had TrueType fonts in their library. They had type 1, and both were replaced by OTF. Adobe haven't removed support for TrueType at all.

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

Okay, I looked at the font information panel in InDesign for the missing font.

I was incorrect that it was a True Type. It was a Type 1 font. They have replaced it with an OTF, and InDesign now shows it as a missing font. I still have the same problem.

What reasonable, time saving option exists to now update this font across thousands of files? And seeing as our other major branding font is still in the Adobe system as a Type 1 font, is this all going to happen again when they get around to that font?

It's not like we have a single book, or a single edition that will just need to use the new font going forward. We have a vast catalog of information saved as individual files. Each individual file has layers whose visibility is turned on or off to display customized information when placed into another InDesign document. So when we make a presentation for a client, we place several dozen linked files in it with custom layer visibilities--each one now having this missing font. Since a book file doesn't allow this layer visibility modification, or overlaying custom information over a stock asset, we can't operate using this as a workaround.

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

Actually, the Type 1 end of life notice from Adobe states that fonts activated from Creative Cloud may show up as OpenType Type 1. They are considered OpenType fonts. The missing font is OpenType Type 1 per screenshots provided on other replies. So it does not appear that this font was a true Type 1 that needed replacing?

I'm tired of chasing my tail on this. All I know is that this font has worked seamlessly after activating from CC for years, until now.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Brainiac

First, you can still keep v16 and v17 on your computers. (I would download the stand-alone installers as a safeguard too.) It's the NEW versions of InDesign that will stop support. Of course, the OS could stop support too, but that has nothing to do with Adobe.

You can use the Find/Change across all open documents. While that may not solve the issue for thousands of documents, you can easily do it on a larger number at a time.

You can either use the supplied FindChangeByList script. Once you set it up, you can share it with others.
You can add the documents to a Book file and do a Find/Change across the book documents. (Be sure to check the Book Page Numbering Options first to adjust the default pagination setting.)

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

I was hopeful that you were on to something here with the version of InDesign and we could just roll back. We're on 17.0.1 so it looks like this version shouldn't be having this problem.

We've been running quite awhile on Mac OS Catalina, and the problem just started in December. This seems to be tied in somehow to CC fonts. All the other fonts we had showed up as missing initially too--I had to deactivate ALL fonts on CC and reactivate them one by one through InDesign as the document called for them. All the other fonts reactivated with that one step in all documents--except the ones with this OTF suffix.

I'll look into the FindChangeByList script and see if that helps with anything. The book option may help in some cases, but since we aren't using books by the time the documents were all added it might not be much of a time saver. Thank you for your suggestions!

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Brainiac

>>but since we aren't using books

Doesn't take long to add documents to a book. The book is just temporary so you can do a F/C across all the documents in a book at once.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

BobLevine

Brainiac

Adobe has done nothing that affects Truetype.

M

Marketing1918Author

Inspiring

The information about the problem being caused by changes with True Type fonts came from Adobe support, which was confirmed by the floor manager while I was on the call.

This font was activated from Creative Cloud fonts from the start, and it is universally showing up as missing. Whatever has happened, it is not a change that we initiated on our end.

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