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Zapf Dingbats will not work in InDesign

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
February 14, 2023
2 replies
10268 views

Hi All:

Running the most recent version of InDesign on an iMac. I replaced my old Type 1 Zapf Dingbats with a brand new (purchased from myfonts.com), ITC Zapf Dingbats Standard, an Open Type font. I put it in my Suitcase Fusion, activated it, everything I am supposed to do. InDesign will not recognize the font. I can see it in the list of fonts, but it will not take when I select type and select Zapf Dingbats. Webdings and Wingdings do not have what I am looking for. What's up with InDesign and Zapf Dingbats. I've seen this question before, but with no viable answer.

Thanks,

Amy

Type

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Kevin Stohlmeyer

In cases like this you should clear your font caches on the Mac to insure no traces of the Type1 Font are still interfering.

Since you're using Suitcase here is a helpful doc:

https://help.extensis.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051176614-Cleaning-font-caches-with-Connect-Fonts-for-Mac

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/troubleshoot-fonts-mac-os-x.html

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Before you assume that it's InDesign's problem, try two things:

(1) See whether your ITC Zapf Dingbats font works in another Adobe application like Illustrator or Photoshop.

(2) Place the font in the InDesign Fonts folder:

A

avalonppAuthor

Participating Frequently

Well, I'm baffled, but it's fixed. I did put the ITC Zapf Dingbats Standard in the InDesign font folder as suggested above. I had completely deleted the Type 1 version from my computer so I'm sure that was not interfering. Initially, the font did not work in Illustrator either, but on a second try, it now does work in both InDesign and Illustrator, and to top it off, a "mystery" version of ZapfDingbats.ttf seems to be working as well, when it was not before. I can't seem to find where the mystery version of ZapfDingbats.ttf actually lives, but it is not in Suitcase. It seems to help to create entirely new files and then use the Zapf Dingbat fonts (either version) Thanks for helping!

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

Hi,

Is there a recommended version of Zapf Dingbat that will not conflict with the OS version?

Thank you,

Jill Banks

Hi @jillb17247237 Jill,

Dingbats were incorporated into the Unicode system a while back, so many, if not all, are available on some regular fonts. I haven't needed to use a dedicated Dingbats font in quite a few years. Here's the codepoint chart for dingbats from Unicode.org: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2700.pdf In InDesign's glyph panel, you can search for the codepoint of the symbol you want and see if your favorite font has it.

Some common fonts with Dingbats:

Noto Sans Symbols 2
Segoe UI Symbol
Source Sans Pro
And from Adobe Fonts, filter for "ornaments" or search for "dingbats." There are some very interesting designs that might have the glyph you want.

What I especially like about using regular fonts is that the glyphs can be in different weights or with variations. In Scotch Display Dingbats (Adobe fonts), for example, the pointing finger has variations where the hand is holding a glass, and the arrows have a very distinctive design.

Have fun with your dingbats!

— Bevi (the Font Fairy)

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

I know font management can be a little involved on Mac — and that ID sometimes looks in a different location from the main font repository. My question would be whether ID is still seeing it as the T1 font and if further updates are needed to clear the mapping?

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