All Adobe PS fonts mysteriously removed from Word 2000 font library

[NORMAN_COUSINS]

HELP !

Operating System:     Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4

Word Processor:        Office 2000 (including Word 2000) with Service Pack 3

Adobe Type Manager Deluxe:     Version 4 .1 installed May 24, 2000, Serial Number XXXXXXXXXXXXXX-XXX.

Adobe Postscript Fonts:     The entire library.

On September 12, 2010, I opened up a Word document created in 1992 on my computer using Adobe postscript font AvantGarde.

I immediately saved the document in the latest version of Word (i.e., Word 2000).

I then highlighted the bolded caption to change the font size from 12 points to 13 points.     "13" is not on the font size drop down menu, so it has to be typed in manually.  I did that.

The second I pressed the "Enter" key, the following events occurred:

               The entire Adobe postscript font library disappeared from the Word 2000 drop down list of available fonts;

               The installation date of the Adobe PS fonts all changed to the date I hit the "Enter" key (i.e., 9/12/2010);

                The file size of each font changed to "OK";

                The attributes of each Adobe PS font changed to "AC";

                The file name of each Adobe PS font was broken by the insertion of an ____ in the file name; I don't know if it replaced any existing characters in the file name;

                 All the Adobe postscript fonts remain in the Master Font List of Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.1, as well as the Adobe folder containing all the Adobe PS fonts;

                 Every Word document ever created on our computer formatted in Adobe PS AvantGarde - about 95% of all our documents - defaulted to either Courier or Avant Guard (pronounce the same, but spelled differently); "Avant Guard" is a true type font.

Adobe Tech support personnel were unable to assist me and suggested I present this problem to the Forum.

I have the name of the engineers who developed Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.1, as well as its technical specifications from Help.

Adobe postscript font "Avantgarde" is practically our firm's logo. Readers recognize our work just by the font.  It's one of the most beautiful and readable fonts in the entire Adobe library.

                 I have no reason to believe the document itself that I opened was corrupted.

                 I have a complete back-up of our entire Adobe postscript library on a 100 MB ZipDisk, but I don't know if simply reinstalling the font files will correct the problem.     I don't want to make things worse by blind experiment.

                 All other font types remain in our Word font library list and are fully accessible; but none are as readable or as beautiful as postscript fonts.

                 Unfortunately, I am not a computer "techie", but I can follow instructions if I understand them.

                 Sincerely appreciative of knowledgeable assistance, I remain

                 Very truly yours,

                                          NORMAN COUSINS

[personal information removed]

[Dov Isaacs]

(1)     Never post a serial number of a product you've licensed on a public forum. We have taken the responsible liberty of replacing that serial number in your post with a series of Xs.

(2)     This forum is associated with the PostScript programming language. Your problem has nothing to do with that whatsoever, but rather, with an event that somewhat mucked up fonts on your host computer system. If anyone in Adobe Technical Support told you to post on the PostScript forum, they were dead wrong. We are sorry for that bum information provided by our Technical Support organization.

(3)     Adobe Type Manager Deluxe has not been supported by Adobe in any way for well over five years.

(4)     There should be nothing that Microsoft Word or the user of same could do within Microsoft Word to cause the symptoms you describe. Neither Word nor Office do anything to uninstall fonts or modify the fonts.

(5)     Without explicitly invoking ATM, ATM has no functionality or for that matter any known bugs that would cause the symptoms you describe.

(6)     Windows' Font Control Panel likewise has no functionality or any known bugs that would cause the symptoms you describe.

Any attempt to further analyze what happened on your computer would be totally a wide-assed guess. However, I could imagine hardware problems with your disk drive causing the type of symptoms you describe. If in fact you are using a computer system that was installed in May 2000 and especially if you are using the original disk drive, I suspect your luck in terms of system longevity may just have given out. (Ten years for a computer system and especially a disk drive is pretty long). Zip Disk? You'd better back that up to something more modern. Neither the drives nor media are readily available for that format anymore.

          - Dov

[NORMAN_COUSINS]

Thanks for the "heads up" about posting a serial number.  I was unaware of that.

Our computer system was completely upgraded three years ago and none of our hard drives are more than three years old.  That includes file servers & workstations.

The only additional information I can add is that I observed that every Adobe postscript font in Adobe Type Manager Deluxe in both Sets and Master Font List now has an x to the left of the font name.     The x is not in a box or circle.

I had the distinct impression that Adobe Tech Support was just trying to get rid of me by sending me to this Forum. You seem quite knowledgeable, though.  Who would you turn to for assistance if you had this problem ?

Thank you.

                    Norman Cousins

[Dov Isaacs]

Who would I turn to? Well, I honestly don't know. Neither Windows 2000, Office 2000, nor ATM Deluxe are supported by the vendors that released these products many years ago. And even then, there aren't that many experts in this area. 😞

The first thing I would do would be to run a full set of diagnostics on your computer and especially its hard disk drive. The symptoms still smell like some type of hardware glitch did something to your font disk files themselves or to their directory entries or possibly the Windows registry entries that support same.

Once you've cleared the hardware, I would uninstall the fonts in question completely, deleting the .pfm and .pfb files associated with them assuming those files still are actually on your system. I would then reboot and then reinstall those fonts and see if that fixes the problem.

          - Dov

PS:     I've been at Adobe and associated with the PostScript and PDF printing products for over 20 years. I've never heard or seen symptoms even remotely like those you describe and that is why I am concerned that you may actually have a hardware problem of some type.