Indesign font substitution while packaging to TTC

[nimble neurons]

This may turn into a rant because I have been reading about this issue for a long time on here but have seen no solutions. I have indesign files that are years old, many many of them, and they all use a particular extremely common font. Obviously the font has never been an issue that's why we've used it for years. As of the last year, whenever I resave and repackage a new file using the existing fonts it will save the font as a .TTC file in the document fonts folder. In the past these fonts were all .dfont files, so apparently inDesign is somehow converting to or finding a TTC version of the font. Well this is bad news for me because when I then open that packaged file the font is missing 100% of the time. It can't read the TTC format it just packaged, so I have to manually go find the .dfont file and put it into the document fonts folder. Even installing the font on the system has not fixed the issue.
Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra

Indesign 15.1.1 (and same issue on every previous version I used since 13.)

[jmlevy]

Which font is it?

[nimble neurons]

Helvetica.dfont the works is Version 10.0d4e1
"© 1990-2006 Apple Computer Inc. © 1981 Linotype AG © 1990-91 Type Solutions Inc."

Helvetica.ttc that does not work is Version 13.0d1e1
"© 1990-2006 Apple Computer Inc. © 1981 Linotype AG © 1990-91 Type Solutions Inc."

[Bill Silbert · Accepted solution]

As of Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in 2008 the dfonts used in the Mac System have been replaced by their counterparts from the True Type collection. Most likely the Helvetica that was used for the creation of your original files was actually the one from the Mac system which showed up in the font menu at the time and was a dfont. When you try to collect for an old file it takes the current .ttc version from the Mac system as part of the collect. I found, however, that when I tried to re-collect an old file of my own from a collected file within a folder containing a Document fonts folder (and thus was actually feeding off of that folder) that the dfont did get collected. When I pulled the Document Fonts folder out of the previously collected folder then the ttc version from the Mac system was collected. So it is clear that the Package function is looking to the Mac System for its Helvetica.

I actually found a way, though, to "trick" the Package function into collecting the dfont. This worked on my old file that had originally been created with the dfont. I created a new folder called "Document fonts" and placed it in the folder containing the old InDesign file. I put a copy of the Helvetica dfont inside this new Document fonts folder and then opened the old InDesign file. I then did a new collect and the dfont was actually collected instead of the true type version. Hopefully, this can work for you with your old files.

[nimble neurons]

Thanks, sounds about right. Not sure I want to manually copy the .dfont into a new Document Fonts folder for each since there's 100s of these packages but it gives me an idea; maybe if I put the dfont in InDesign's application fonts folder it will work for all of them.