Why do I have so much font issues?

[Mac1337]

I am running 10.5.2 on a MacBook. When opening PDF files, many times I don't get the correct font unless I open and close the document several times. Same problem with Word and PP. I clear the font cache and that seems to fix the problem but it comes back. Never had this problem ever before.

[jdc]

are you using something to manage your fonts?

[MacMagus]

Stop using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

[Article Accelerator]

What MacMagus said.

I can't understand why anyone would use that instead of Preview for opening PDFs.

[modelamac]

The one and only time I have had any trouble with fonts is just recently, trying to open a Word ".doc" in Pages. Apparently my son (XP) used a font not available to Pages, so I had to use Office X.

I've never had a font fetish, so I use what shows up first.

Any time you can use Preview over Acrobat, I think you are better off. Especially since you won't get that annoying prompt to "update to the newest version that breaks things."

[Mac1337]

It is not just Acrobat. Preview does the same. Seems like system-wide issue. Any painless way to delete font caches with no rebooting?

[C(-)ris]

You must reboot to clear the caches. That is just the way it works. Really, you need to look at all the fonts you have installed and figure out what the problem is. You must have some duplicates of the same font and it has no idea which one to pick. I would pick up a copy of Font Doctor and run all your fonts through that. You can also look in Font Book and fonts with the bullet next to them are conflicting or bad.

[swampy]

OS 10.5.2 forces dFonts on you as system fonts (Times and Helvetica). If you used something other than Apples dFonts to create documents (such as a Postscript Times/Helvetica), you will find that programs will tell you that fonts are missing.

[ka jowct]

OS 10.5.2 forces dFonts on you as system fonts (Times and Helvetica). If you used something other than Apples dFonts to create documents (such as a Postscript Times/Helvetica), you will find that programs will tell you that fonts are missing.

Also OS 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4. I replace the must-have system dfonts with postscript versions, and move all the non-essential ones so that I can manage them with Suitcase or Font Explorer or whatever.

[MacMagus]

Remove any and all fonts from your ~/Library/Fonts folder and the /Library/Fonts folder.

Then safe-boot once. Hold down the shift key on startup and keep it held down until you see the swirly thing under the Apple logo at the gray startup screen. It will take a bit longer to start up than it usually does. It's doing some housecleaning, including cleaning out font caches. Restart after its finished safe-booting.

Then use ONLY Apple's Preview app to view your PDF's. If it still displays fonts incorrectly then you've got bad fonts embedded in the PDF.

As for Word... MS Office uses its own font caching scheme and it's probably the worst in the business. Go to ~/\Library\Preferences\Microsoft and find the Office font cache file. Trash it. The next time that you start an Office app, it should rebuild the cache and that problem should be fixed.