Missing Fonts

[bil...@adobeforums.com]

There are fonts installed on my system, which are available in Word, CorelDraw, and other applications, but they do NOT show up, at all, in the fonts list of ANY CS2 application ... InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator. This situation might be true of OTHER fonts, but the only ones I'm conscious of are the basic four variations of Arial Narrow, and Arial Black. (Arial Black Oblique is ALSO installed, and it IS available.)

These EXACT SAME fonts WERE available in Adobe applications, as long as I was using XP. Now that I've switched to Vista, they've ceased to function.

I've tried reinstalling these fonts and rebooting. What else can I do?

Thanks!

bilglas

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

I don't have Vista, but try copying the fonts (don't move them or non-Adobe apps won't see them) to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

Peter

[Al_W...@adobeforums.com]

I have the exact same problem. I spent 4 hours yesterday trying everything immaginable to fix this - nothing worked. Specifically, illus. can't see the Arial Narrow family. It lists Arial as the family and Narrow as a style but can't see Arial Narrow Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, etc.
Any ideas?

[Al_W...@adobeforums.com]

PS - Peter
Vista won't allow me to copy the font files to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts. I tried dragging, copy/paste, threatening gestures with a baseball bat... They just won't copy - no error message - just nothing happens.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

I've always found saying "Please" to be more effective than baseball bats, but I'm not dealing with Vista. That is very odd.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Because I don't have this problem I thought maybe it's a version issue.

The four variants of Arial narrow all show up in my fonts folder as separate file, and double clicking any of them to get a sample and font data reveals that they are all OpenType with TrueType outlines (they all have the .ttf extension, if you make it show) and are version 2.3 from Monotype. As far as I know, these fonts were included with Office 2000, but I won't swear to it as they could also have been part of the Windows XP installation.

Do you have a newer or older version on your system?

Peter

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Looking back on other threads I see this is a Vista issue, apparently, and not a CS3 issue as folks reported it with CS2 as well.

<http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc3df43/0>

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Did you check your font versions? I'm curious if they are the same as mine.

[Al_W...@adobeforums.com]

Hi Peter
This problem seems to be all over the boards since at least Feb.
I have a brand new machine with Vista pre-instaled. I had Illus CS2 installed on an XP machine and the fonts all show up there. I have a friend with CS3 and he has the same problem. So, actually it appears to be a CS2/3//Vista problem.

[Al_W...@adobeforums.com]

narrow, narrow bold, narrow bold italic = 2.37
narrow italic = 2.30 (copied from XP machine as one of my many fix attempts)

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Al,

Set a restore point before you try this, and then only if you are desperate, because I have no idea what will happen since you can't seem to copy fonts.

Copy the version 2.3 fonts from your XP machine to any folder except the fonts folder. (keep in mind I don't have a Vista machine to look at).

Use Windows to uninstall the Arial Narrow fonts from the file menu in the fonts folder (and I'd REALLY try to copy them to someplace again before doing this).

Reboot, just to be sure the registry gets updated.

Use Windows to install the old versions from the folder where you copied them from XP, using the fonts folder file menu command again.

Reboot.

Check to see if I'm a hero.

Peter

[Al_W...@adobeforums.com]

Hi Peter
I fixed it!! I read on another forum that corrupted fonts might be being read as arial so I went through and deleted about 250 of the over 400 font files on my system, including the Arial Narrow family. I then installed the older Arial Narrow family from my XP machine. That didn't fix it but then I re-installed Illus. and that did it. I have no idea which were the offending fonts (if that is indeed what the problem was) but somehow it worked.
Thanks so much for your advice and interest.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

If somebody else is in the same pickle, I'd suggest after replacing the fonts, you try deleting the Adobe font cache files rather than reinstalling an entire application. Alternatively, you could remove the "bad" Arial Narrow fonts, launch InDesign, and then put the good/old Arial Narrow fonts back in place.

Regards,

T

[Gery_R...@adobeforums.com]

Hi, i'm having the same trouble (with InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, and Photoshop CS2) of Arial Narrow embedding itself in the Arial font list with no way to access Arial Narrow Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic. However, I am running XP (Home version, had the same trouble with Pro version, both with SP2), not Vista, so this is not exclusively a Vista problem. As others have noted, all is well with the MS Office suite and other programs, so this is definitely a CS2/3 issue with the MS XP/Vista operating systems. (At the office I have Windows 2000 and the fonts show up fine with the CS2 suite. This is a pain because I telework so much and keep getting missing font alarms that I can't resolve at home.)

I noticed that all the arial fonts on my home machine list with the Open type icon even tho they have ttf extensions. the fonts at the office were older versions, so i deleted the new ones and installed the old ones from the office, and they show up with the TT icon. Unfortunately, it didn't help. I still don't get Arial Narrow showing up independently on the font list, even after rebooting. Someone suggested deleting the Windows cache files -- i would try that but i don't know where they are. Does rebooting refresh them? i did that with no luck.

Deleting hundreds of fonts and reinstalling programs is not my first choice of game plan; i'm on a tight deadline and don't have time to experiment, was hoping to find a reliable solution that was relatively quick and painless. Silly me? (i cant just change the document designs -- corporate standards use arial narrow. don't get me going on that one.)

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Search for and delete all Adobefnt*.lst files. Don not delete the Adobefnt.db file.

[Gery_R...@adobeforums.com]

thanks, peter. i deleted the files and rebooted. no dice.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Try temporarily deleting the Arial Narrow fonts again and the AdobeFnt*.lst files, too. Reboot, launch InDesign, and reinstall the Arial Narrow fonts.

Re-reading Thomas's post I think it might be important to regenerate the font cache file before installing the Arial Narrow.

[Al_W...@adobeforums.com]

Hey All
Read this post from a different thread and then my post #11 above:

"A little update on my specific problem – which has been resolved, in the course of which I discovered some strange stuff that remains unresolved. It seems like when InDesign generates its font list and the Find Font dialogue box, it gets its information on what fonts are available from PostScript files, not necessarily the fonts themselves. To make a long story short, THIS was the cause of my problem.

Here's where we stood: All InDesign documents my coworker and I attempted to open that contained Arial fonts (regular, italic, bold, bold italic) came up with an error message that these fonts were missing. They were not, the font files were right where they always had been and were even packaged with each document. Some documents were originally created by myself by copying/pasting PageMaker text and graphics, others were just brand new documents with brand new text and graphics.

Come to find out, we had a corrupted Helvetica.ttf font on both our computers that somehow got itself associated with outdated Arial PostScript info. These Arial PostScript imposters were being displayed under “Arial” in InDesign – both in the font list and in Find Font. The only way to see that they were being generated NOT by the Arial.ttf file(s), but in actuality the Helvetic.ttf file, was in the path information in Find Font.

I did some testing once I discovered the discrepancy, making new files with these Arial imposters. Sure enough, no font problems – for myself or my coworker. Then I packaged the test files, trying to recreate the same situation as the original documents that, once out of my computer, returned font errors. This time, instead of packaging the Arial.ttf files and then choking for one or both of us, InDesign bundled the Helvetic.ttf file and everything still worked OK on both computers. Very odd.

In any event, we gave the corrupted Helvetic.ttf file the boot and installed a brand new version, crossing our fingers because before – when we had attempted to replace the old Arial PostScript files with the newer/real ones (something that we couldn’t do consistently, for unknown reasons) – replacing the fonts caused massive problems with a lot of text in a lot of tables. This time there was no rocky transition. Once Helvetic.ttf was gone, InDesign loaded up the correct Arial PostScript files and gave us no error messages about fonts being missing. This is interesting, given that we had deleted the font that originally created all the instances of Arial in these documents, but not so interesting if InDesign is seeking out PostScript data, not actual font file names, when it decides what fonts are available for use.

I still do no know how the Helvetica file could have been corrupted to return this particular result or why the problem was able to jump from one computer to another when no files were exchanged at any time – this was the real horror, files that no one but myself had ever touched and were nowhere else but my computer were suddenly reporting missing fonts.

Kudos must go to two programs, Font Xplorer, which tipped me off to multiple versions of font PostScript files hanging around, and Font Doctor, which identified the Helvetica font as corrupted. InDesign was a help in that it was the only program which displayed both the PostScript file info and the font file path (otherwise I’d never have known Helvetic.ttf was generating the Arial PostScripts), but if it wasn’t so picky, none of these problems would likely have surfaced in the first place, soo….. "

I didn't have Helvetica installed and since I deleted about 200 font files I don't know which one(s) were corrupted, but the result was the same. You can delete the Adobefnt*.lst files and reboot all you want but until you get rid of the corrupted fonts, it won't help.

[KellyG...@adobeforums.com]

Ok same problem here. I needed arial narrow bold super bad so what I did is install Font Xplorer (props to Mr. White) and right click install on arial narrow bold.

It showed up in illustrator.

word.

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

arial narrow bold super bad

Now there's a font to crave! [grin]

Dave

[Tina_O...@adobeforums.com]

I have perhaps a similar and certainly equally as frustrating a problem. I am trying to download about 10 Khmer fonts. All the fonts appear in Word and Photoshop, but only 2 of the 8 appear in InDesign CS2 on Windows XP. Any ideas?

[Tina_O...@adobeforums.com]

Worse, the fonts show up in Indesign 2 but Not CS2 (Windosows XP).

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Just to be sure, have you scrolled through the whole font list in CS2? They might be grouped at the bottom.

Peter

[Joel_C...@adobeforums.com]

Hey Tina, which Khmer fonts are you trying to use? My experience with both the Limon and Ekreach families is that they need to be edited in order to appear in ID. Editing fonts is a horrible, horrible idea for any stable print workflow, and may well be in violation of the licensing agreement depending on foundry, but in the case of Limon and Ekreach, it's the only way I know of to get them to function in ID.

I'm 95% sure that Khmer fonts won't appear at the bottom of the font list in ID. If they're Khmer Unicode fonts, they're not supported by Cooltype or Uniscribe, or at least they weren't the last time I checked. If they appear in ID at all, I'd bet money that the fonts are identifying themselves as Thai fonts, and you'll have severe character drops when trying to set Khmer type.

If they're not Unicode fonts (like the Limon and Ekreach mentioned above), then they most likely will not appear in the font dropdown because they weren't generated correctly. However, if you have a tool to edit TrueType fonts, you might be able to get them to work in a duct-taped sort of way.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

"It seems like when InDesign generates its font list and the Find Font dialogue box, it gets its information on what fonts are available from PostScript files, not necessarily the fonts themselves."

"...replace the old Arial PostScript files..."

"InDesign was a help in that it was the only program which displayed both the PostScript file info and the font file path (otherwise I’d never have known Helvetic.ttf was generating the Arial PostScripts)...."

Just two clarifications: the writer is using "PostScript files" to mean "(PostScript) Type 1 font files," and these ARE actual fonts. However, they later refer to "Arial PostScripts" to mean fonts showing up in the menu regardless of what fonts are physically around. Very confusing.

Cheers,

T

[Mauro_...@adobeforums.com]

Has anybody found a solution for this? How about Adobe Support? I could not find anything on their knowledgebase.

[Tina_O...@adobeforums.com]

I am using Limon fonts, specifically S1 and R1. S1 appears just fine (not at the bottom of the list), but not R1. And they both appear correctly in Word.

Tina

[Mauro_...@adobeforums.com]

I found the culprit but not exactly the solution. The problem is NOT related to Vista. It also happens in machines with Windows XP. The issue is related with Office 2007. Adobe products do not recognize fonts installed by Office 2007.

I did several tests. I installed Vista on a desktop. Arial Narrow is not installed as system font. Then I installed CS2 and Arial Narrow (version 2.35). It worked perfectly. After that I installed Office 2007. The problem appeared again: Arial Narrow displays as a variant of Arial. And if you a have a document in Word using Calibri, Distiller does NOT output the PDF because it does not find the font.

Then I tried to remove Arial Narrow version 2.37 (installed by Office 2007) and installed Arial Narrow version 2.35. A weird thing happened: the font appears duplicated in the Windows font folder.

I did the same tests in a desktop with Windows XP. Adobe products work fine with Arial Narrow as long as Office 2007 is not installed. Once you install Office 2007 the problem appears.

I called Microsoft and they told me they cannot help me with this. Adobe is not helping.

What the hell are we supposed to do?

[boblevine]

I can confirm the behavior but I'm not quite sure it's a bad thing going
forward. I far prefer to see these font styles linked properly to their
families.

Whether this was intentional or not, I don't know.

You might want to take this over to the type forum where the real font
gurus hang out. There may be some insight into this over there.

Bob

[Mauro_...@adobeforums.com]

The problem is that I cannot apply the following styles:
Arial Narrow Bold
Arial Narrow Italic
Arial Narrow Bold Italic

The only thing that I can apply is Arial Narrow itself. I would not mind if all the arial narrow styles would appear under Arial. The problem is that I cannot use the 3 styles above.

Also, how do you explain that the new fonts installed by Office 2007 as Calibri are not recognized by Distiller?

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

I far prefer to see these font styles linked properly to their families.

And I doubt that anyone would be complaining if ALL the narrow variants were showing up with the plain variants. It's the missing italic and bold variants that seems to have people (rightly) steamed.

Interesting that this is an Office 2007 issue. One more reason not to upgrade.

Peter

[boblevine]

Ah yes...I do see the problem now.

Interesting. I'm guessing there's some type of bug there, but I'm not
enough of an expert in font technology to to even guess who's fault this is.

Bob

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

I'm guessing there's some type of bug there, but I'm not enough of an
expert in font technology to to even guess who's fault this is.

But we can take a stab at who is in a better position to ignore or break an existing standard. ;)

[boblevine]

I never should stepped into this thread. Ignore everything with the
exception of confirming the behavior. :(

Bob

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Could you post a link to putting the genie back into the bottle, please.

[Mauro_...@adobeforums.com]

I FOUND THE SOLUTION!

1) Log into any computer running Windows XP, locate and copy the 4 Arial Narrow files:
ARIALN.TTF - 132 KB
ARIALNB.TTF - 136 KB
ARIALNBI.TTF - 136 KB
ARIALNI.TTF - 139 KB
Please note that the extension is TTF, not OTF (installed with Office 2007) and the size is smaller (Arial Narrow OTF size is over 170KB)

2) Copy the files to the following folder: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

3) Open any Adobe product (I have tested with Illustrator CS2, Indesign CS2 and Indesign CS3). You will now see both Arial and Arial Narrow listed. However, Arial Narrow (Regular) is listed under Arial.You will see:

ARIAL and the variants:
Narrow
Regular
Italic
Bold
Bold Italic
Black
ARIAL NARROW and the variants:
Italic
Bold
Bold Italic

Therefore if you wish to use Arial Narrow Regular you have to select Arial and the variant Narrow. For the the other Arial Narrow variants, select Arial Narrow and the variant you want to use.

Please let me know if this worked for you. Good luck!

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

I'd like to add to my earlier post speculating about responsibility.

As I'm not a font expert, nor knowledgeable about how Adobe products get information about what fonts are loaded in the system, I suppose it is possible that this is similar to the problems people report about various Adobe apps "breaking" their PDF workflow.

In those cases it has been suggested that the problems are caused by third-party developers' failures to properly implement the postscript standard. In fairness, it is not impossible, however unlikely, that Adobe could also be guilty of such a lapse, and that the newer fonts are making use of code in a new, but compliant, way which was not anticipated.

Peter

[Howie_Nordström@adobeforums.com]

Thanks you Mauro. That did the trick.

[Andrew...@adobeforums.com]

BRILLIANT! It now works perfectly!

Thanks!

[An...@adobeforums.com]

It works!! Thank you Mauro!

[Trace...@adobeforums.com]

Mauro....you are my favorite person of the day! Thanks a bunch!

[Rob...@adobeforums.com]

If you are using Office 2007 or Vista and receive "missing fonts" error for the Arial Narrow family, then please try these intructions.

Office 2007 and Vista change the old fonts dated 11/12/1998 to a newer version dated 7/14/2006. Apparently, InDesign does not like this newer version. If you have access to a computer with Office 2003 (or a machine that doesn't have Office 2007 or Vista installed), then go into the folder C:\Windows\Fonts and grab the old versions of:

ARIALN
ARIALNB
ARIALNBI
ARIALNI

Dated 11/12/1998 and save to a folder.

Then go into the folder:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

and delete the files:

ARIALN
ARIALNB
ARIALNBI
ARIALNI

dated 7/14/2006

and replace with the older version.

This should resolve the issue.

-Rob

[Tod...@adobeforums.com]

Wow. Thank you Mauro. After killing an entire day on this, that trick worked.

[Adam_...@adobeforums.com]

Cheers for that.Nice and simple!!

[Myrna_...@adobeforums.com]

I can tell you what the problem is, and it lies in the font name that is embedded in the July 2006 versions of these files.

There are "advanced naming options" in which one can specify the Preferred Font Family and the Preferred Font SubFamily to be exposed by Windows. In the 1998 versions of these fonts, those fields are empty.

In the 2006 versions, the Family is simply "Arial" and the SubFamily is "Narrow".

I used a font editor and changed these fields to Family = Arial Narrow and SubFamily as appropriate, i.e. Regular, Bold, Italic, or Bold Italic, and saved the modified fonts under new names. These fonts now show up in InDesign as Arial Narrow, with the 4 subtypes. Arial Narrow is no longer a subtype of Arial.

Yes, I know that modifying the files isn't legal, but I did this for testing purposes only, to determine the source of the problem. If you want to stay "legal", just install the 1998 versions, as previously described.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Unfortunately, this is not something Adobe can patch.

Microsoft made a change in the newer versions of Arial Narrow, to fill in some additional "name" fields in the font. Unfortunately, they also inadvertently gave all four Arial Narrow fonts the same OpenType "style" name in the new versions of the font. That's just a bug and causes some of the problems described.

But even without that error, the new fonts might very well be showing up as having different names, for the simple reason that they do indeed have different names.

Once Microsoft updates the fonts to correct the bug, and everyone moves to the even newer fonts, the problems will go away. Until then, there's not a lot Adobe can do.

Regards,

T

[Hyla_S...@adobeforums.com]

I was also grateful to find this post, as I too was tearing my hair out. But interestingly my Arial Narrow nightmare occurred in switching from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. So perhaps there is a larger issue than just between CS2 and CS3.

My Adobe applications actually REMAINED THE SAME (Photoshop 7, Illustrator 8 and InDesign CS2)from the old machine to the new. I literally just reinstalled them. On my old 2000 machine, all was fine, on my new XP machine, none of my Adobe applications recognized Arial Narrow any more. But the fix of copying and pasting the fonts into the Adobe font directory fixed the problem for me. Thanks!

I have noticed a few other annoying font glitches in XP as well. One of the fonts I use heavily for a client, Trajan Pro, has lost it's bold functionality in Adobe applications on my XP (whereas it had a bold option on my 2000 machine), which also drives me nuts. I may see if this trick will help with that as well...
But thanks for the help. Hyla

[shirle...@adobeforums.com]

Can someone please help me in locating these Arial fonts that are dated for 11/12/1998? I have looked into several XP machines running office 2003 and I am unable to find these fonts. I can only find the same fonts that are dated 7/14/2006. I have looked on the Microsoft Website and others and am not able to locate the Arial fonts with the same size and date as needed to fix my CS3 missing font issue. I have found that these websites suggest that these fonts are discontinued. Can someone please tell me where I can go or suggest another option to get these most needed fonts. I would love to see if this solution works!!

Thank you!!

Shirley

[shirle...@adobeforums.com]

Can you tell me where I can locate these Arial Fonts. I have looked at several PCs that have XP on them but all have the same fonts that are dated 7/14/2006 with 175KB. I have not been able to locate any with the date 11/12/1998 or the size of 135KB. I have gone to several websites, including Microsoft's. They say that these fonts are discontinued. Do you know of another way for me to obtain these fonts? I would very much like to see if this solution with work for our many CS3 users.

Thank you!!

Shirley

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Those versions are indeed discontinued. My recollection is they were shipped as part of either Windows 2000 or Office 2000.

[bpi...@adobeforums.com]

Thank you, Mauro, for your inspired solution in Message #35!

[Pat_J...@adobeforums.com]

Solution:
Go to www.fonts.com
Purchase Arial Narrow family ($104 for reg., bold, italic & bold italic)
Download and unzip
Go to Control Panel, Fonts, File, Install new font
Done

I just did it, and it worked in XP-InDesign CS3

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

People should be pressuring Microsoft to fix the bug in their fonts, not letting them off the hook by buying new versions of those fonts. As well, many people will have older versions of the fonts floating around somewhere, so I wouldn't advise people to rush out and spend $104 on new fonts.

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Microsoft has issued a "Hotfix" for their bug in Arial Narrow.
<http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2008/09/arial_narrow.html>

Cheers,

T

[bil...@adobeforums.com]

Hey... I'm the geek who started this thread, some 15 months ago. I was very excited to learn (thanks, Thomas) that Microsoft had issued a "hotfix" for the problem! Finally! I've gone through the ridiculously convoluted process of applying the fix ... installation successful.

Well, I don't know about Microsoft Word, but for InDesign CS3 and Photoshop CS3, nothing has changed. The font selection list offers either ARIAL or ARIAL BLACK. When choosing ARIAL, the variations include Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic .... AND (erroneously) Narrow and Black. The only style option when choose ARIAL BLACK is Italic.

I've rebooted, I've check the fonts listed in my windows/fonts folder ... nothing has changed. Still have no way of getting Arial Narrow Italic, Arial Narrow Bold, or Arial Narrow Bold Italic.

Incidentally, all ten variations DO appear correctly in CorelDraw X3, so one might argue that the problem is Adobe's ... but personally, I'd much rather blame Microsoft.

Anybody else have any luck with that "hotfix"?

[Dov Isaacs]

Yep, success here!

The trick is that you need to rebuild the Adobe font cache mechanism. First, exit all Adobe programs. Then, search and delete ALL files of the form AdobeFnt##.lst where ## is a two digit number.

At that point, all nine of the Arial family members appear as styles under Arial.

- Dov

[boblevine]

> Yep, success here!

And here as well after deleting the font cache files.

Bob

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks guys. I have updated my blog post to include the cache-deletion step.

Cheers,

T

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

Ok, so I work for an Architectural firm and we are having this issue all over the place with CS3.

The version of our Arial Narrow fonts are 2.37, which is weird because we don't use Office 2007.
- I tried applying the hotfix even though we only have Office 2003, but it didn't work.

I don't see how this is a Microsoft Problem?

Works fine in Adobe CS2 but doesn't in Adobe CS3.
- yeah i know there is issues with Office 2007 with the font group, but we aren't running Office 2007!!!

Unfortunately I don't have a PC in which I can go back to which has a 1998 version of the font.
- If someone does, i would love them to e-mail me them or something.

I've even got some Windows XP 64-bit machines which are having the same issue.
- Tried all the fixes suggested but NOTHING works.

I called Adobe, and they just said that their systems aren't fully supported by 64-bit and don't support Windows XP SP3.

When is Adobe going to start fixing their god dam product?

I don't see why it works for some but not others?

Any suggestions?

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

Tried all the fixes suggested but NOTHING works.

So, you've installed older versions of Arial then?

Or you installed the hotfix and rebuilt the font cache?

[boblevine]

> Any suggestions?

Try running the hot fix. It works.

Bob

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Try running the hot fix. It works.

I believe he said he did that, but it didn't work.

[boblevine]

Sorry, I missed that. I ran it on several machines and it worked. If it
didn't work then something else is wrong here. But instead of actual
details all we got was a rant.

Bob

[Cathleen_Ab...@adobeforums.com]

My "Hot Fix", after trying numerous things posted here and my reluctance of changing too much on my system which (other than this problem) operating well, is to run 2 versions of InDesign. CS2 for all projects created with that or earlier and CS3 for new projects where Arial narrow is not a must. It is unfortunate that it is necessary to do this due to Adobe's refusal to fix their blunder with this software release. Each time they send me a survey I go over this problem and the stress it causes but have never received a reply. I shudder at what we might expect with the release of CS4.

[boblevine]

Cathleen,

Microsoft issued a fix for this. Did you try it?

If not, why not?

Bob

[Cathleen_Ab...@adobeforums.com]

I do not have Office o7 on my Computer, I am still on 03. I do not have a problem with any other programs in this area, I do not believe it is a Microsoft issue and I have had enough "yeah, just run this simple patch" "solutions" cause issues in my computers over the years. It is obviously an Adobe mess-up and it should be a fix that is applied to the Adobe product which is not working rather than the Microsoft product that is working (with full Arial narrow). Just the fact that I can use the fonts without issue in ID CS2 but not CS3 is enough to convince me the problem came from Adobe and the fix should be applied to the Adobe product.

[boblevine]

Are you running Vista? If so, it's the same issue and it's still
Microsoft's to fix...which as already noted here has been done.

I've got a brief summary of the whole thing here:

http://indesignsecrets.com/hotfix-corrects-arial-narrow-problem-on-windows.php

Bob

[Cathleen_Ab...@adobeforums.com]

No still on XP (and glad of it)

[bil...@adobeforums.com]

I got the hotfix, I've follow Robert Levine's instructions, and YES, things are, now, as they should be! So thanks to Robert and Microsoft for that (although I still agree with Cathleen that the responsibility should've been Adobe's, but why point fingers?)

BUT: Why isn't there an OpenType font for Arial Black Italic? What's up with that? As it happens, in my case, it's a moot question, because I still have an old TrueType version of Arial Black Italic installed, and it IS available as an entirely separate font choice. (That is, I've got the NINE variations of OpenType Arial available from ARIAL, but I've also got the TrueType Arial Black Italic available from ARIAL BLACK.) Just wondering, though, why Black Italic isn't part of the latest Arial family? I couldn't find an answer online ... anybody know?

Bill

[boblevine]

You'd need to ask Microsoft that. It's their font.

Bob

[noelburgess]

It's a Monotype font:
http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/mondosearchresults.htm?kid=arial+black+italic&st=12

Yours for all of £19 in Britain.
--
Noel

[bil...@adobeforums.com]

What you're forgetting, Noel, is that converting £19 into U.S. money comes to about $700 billion...... ;-)

Bill

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

I do not have Office o7 on my Computer, I am still on 03.

But what version of Arial Narrow do you have? It could have been updated with a Windows SP or with some other update.

I do not believe it is a Microsoft issue ...

So why did Microsoft issue a fix for it then? Or are they covering for Adobe for some nefarious purpose?

I have had enough "yeah, just run this simple patch" "solutions" cause
issues in my computers over the years.

So, do a system restore if it doesn't work. But don't expect a lot of sympathy if you're not prepared to take the advice offered.

[Dov Isaacs]

To tie up some loose ends, the basic problem was that Microsoft released some versions of Arial Narrow with defective information in the names fields internal to the font. These names are of signficance to the Adobe applications (or any application that cares about proper typography). These malformed fonts came with Office 2007 and possibly various other updates to Windows and other versions of Office

Adobe couldn't "fix" the problem becuase the fonts came from Microsoft.

The Microsoft hot fix simply replaces the defective versions of Arial Narrow with corrected versions. However, after running the Microsoft hot fix, you also need to manually delete all file names of the form Adobefnt##.lst where ## is a one or two digit number. After that, the Arial Narrow fonts register correctly.

- Dov

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

Dov

The only thing that isn't clear to me is that a couple of people have reported Arial Narrow appearing correctly in CS2 but not CS3. Is this something you have been able to duplicate? If so, why does this occur? Is CS3 more picky about fonts than CS2?

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

Ok so I have fixed this problem.

The Arial Narrow fonts were version 2.37

I grabbed the fonts from one of our servers and this version was 2.35

So i deleted the v2.37 fonts

Then deleted the AdobeFnt##.lst files

Installed the old v2.35 fonts from the server

Also copied the fonts to
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS3\Fonts
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts

Restarted Adobe InDesign and this fixed the issue.

The above solution fixed the Windows XP 64-bit problems with CS3

I don't know how I got version 2.37 fonts when I don't have Office 2007.

The only thing I can think of is Windows XP SP3 or some Windows Update?

[boblevine]

Could well be that that's the version that shipped with XP64. Just a guess.

Bob

[Cathleen_Ab...@adobeforums.com]

I am one of those reporting that the Arial narrow problem is not present in InDesign CS2 where the Arial Narrow family is a stand alone with ital, bold, & bold ital as font variants. In InDesign CS3 the Arial Narrow family is gone and instead Airal Narrow appears under Arial as a variant but the ital, bold, & bold ital are not available for Arial Narrow.

Here is the reason for my reluctance to "fix" a supposed Microsoft problem. If I were to do so and the problem was actually what all common sense would indicate, the result in a change that Adobe made between the issue of Indesign CS2 & CS3, and the "fix" made it so these fonts were not available in CS2 I would have a world of work ahead of me when performing what would otherwise be minor updates to older files.

[boblevine]

Then there's not much anyone else can offer you. You've been told it's a
Microsoft issue. Microsoft has issued a fix.

There are issues on the Mac side with Leopard and the same thing is
going on over there. "It's only InDesign so it must be Adobe's problem."

The only difference is that Microsoft has fixed the issue and Apple is
"still working on it."

At some point, that hotfix MS issued will be rolled out in a Windows
Update anyway. You might just as well do it now.

Bob

[Kenneth...@adobeforums.com]

> Here is the reason for my reluctance to "fix" a supposed Microsoft
> problem.

Here is the reason that you won't get the problem fixed until you
overcome your reluctance:

> Adobe couldn't "fix" the problem becuase the fonts came from
> Microsoft.

(quoting Dov Isaacs)

It's pretty easy to avoid using Arial Narrow (or any other Arial)
completely (thus solving the problem without actually fixing it).
Helvetica Narrow uses the same glyph widths. In fact, if you're printing
to a Postscript printer, it's very likely you're substituting Helvetica
Narrow for Arial Narrow anyway.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

[Dov Isaacs]

I hope you are not implying that Arial Narrow is somehow automatically substituted by Helvetica Narrow when printing to a PostScript printer. Neither InDesign nor PostScript printers work that way. You would explicitly need to convert your InDesign document to use Helvetica Narrow and you would need to have the Helvetica Narrow fonts installed on your system running InDesign!

- Dov

[Kenneth...@adobeforums.com]

I was implying that the printer driver (not the printer) substitutes
device fonts unless told not to. I'm referring to that line buried deep
in the driver that says "Truetype Font: Substitute with Device Font"
until you change it to "Truetype Font: Download as Softfont".

My personal experience seeing evidence of this is many years, OSs, and
DTP apps old, so I'd be happy to believe this is no longer the case. If
so, what does "Substitute with Device Font" mean these days?

[Dov Isaacs]

Nope, that substitution absolutely does not happen with any Adobe CS applications printing via any printer driver. These applications generate their own PostScript except for device control "setpagedevice" operators.

And by the way, we do consider that driver option to be very dangerous when used with other applications given that there are in fact many differences between Microsoft's workalike TrueType fonts and the printer resident fonts. At Adobe, we routinely advise users to change that option to "download as softfont" to avoid problems.

- Dov

[Cathleen_Ab...@adobeforums.com]

This is all very interesting but, can anyone tell me why the same font set behaves differently in InDesign CS2 than in InDesign CS3 using the same computer and the same, supposedly in need of "fixing" font set? This is what is confusing to me. And as far as just switching to another font, I am talking about documents that go back several years many updated yearly, many with large areas of small (arial narrow) text. A subsitiuted font would be nothing less than a nightmare when you think of all the width & spacing adjustments which were made to fit text to space.

[Kenneth...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, Dov, I stand corrected.

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

Can anyone tell me why the same font set behaves differently in InDesign

CS2 than in InDesign CS3 ...?

Are you using them both at the same time (ie, you open IDCS2, Arial Narrow appears correctly, then you open IDCS3 and it doesn't)? Or are you saying it used to work fine in CS2 but now you have only CS3 on your PC and it doesn't work there?

If the former, I'd check the separate font folder for CS2 and see if you have an older version of Arial in there. If the latter, try the MS hot fix.

I were to do so [run the fix] and the problem was actually what all common

sense would indicate, the result in a change that Adobe made between the
issue of Indesign CS2 & CS3, and the "fix" made it so these fonts were

not available in CS2 ...

First off, to everyone else here (and to Microsoft), common sense indicates the problem is a Microsoft issue. Secondly, why would installing a corrected version of Arial Narrow make Arial Narrow unavailable in CS2? I can't see how that could possibly follow, but if you're so wrorried, just keep a copy of your existing Arial Narrow fonts before you run the fix. I really don't know why you won't apply the patch. It's like you don't want the problem fixed so that you can continue to blame Adobe for it.

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

Some of us can't apply the "hot fix" provided by Microsoft because it's not applicable to us.

The "Hot Fix" is only compatible with Office 2007. Apparently if you have Office 2007 then you will have this issue.

I was having this issue and I don't even have Office 2007.
- I'm running Office 2003.

Microsoft don't have a fix available for users running into this problem with Office 2003.

The only thing I can think of is that the fonts got updated to v2.37 with Windows XP SP3 for the 32-bit operating systems.

And with the machines running Windows XP 64-bit SP2, it must have shipped with v2.37

For anyone who doesn't have Office 2007 and can't apply the fix, because it doesn't do anything I have the older font versions (v2.35) here which I can e-mail you to fix this issue.

Remember that Adobe CS3 doesn't support running on Windows XP SP3
- it works but Adobe said users have had huge amounts of issues with the compatibility and bugs. I guess Adobe are working on this.

Adobe CS3 also doesn't support running on Windows XP 64-bit

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Remember that Adobe CS3 doesn't support running on Windows XP SP3 - it
works but Adobe said users have had huge amounts of issues with the compatibility
and bugs. I guess Adobe are working on this.

Where are you getting this information? I haven't seen any announcement regarding incompatibility, nor are we seeing "huge amounts" of problems that are attributed to SP3. There are some reported issues, frequently printing-related, that may be caused by SP3, and a confirmed issue regarding an inability to open Pagemaker files after installing SP3, but not even dozens of posts, let alone huge amounts, and many of them can't be confirmed as update related.

I personally am not upgrading to SP3, partly because I don't want to make trouble for CS3 or earlier versions, but mostly because, as far as I can tell, it doesn't include anything I find useful other than the security updates which I've been downloading and installing right along.

Peter

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

I have been informed by Adobe support about this.

The support person pretty much told me to stay on SP2 if possible. I refuse to do this though.

I've personally only really run into this font issue. Whether it's caused by SP3 i'm not 100% sure yet. I'll need to check a machine with SP2 to see if it has the different font version.

Plus i've run into a few issues, but i'm pretty sure these problems are prior to SP3

Just thought I would let you know what they told me.

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

The "Hot Fix" is only compatible with Office 2007.

I may be wrong, but I don't see why this would be so; the hot fix just corrects the wrong entries in the Arial Narrow fonts. I'm not sure if it just installs new versions of the fonts or corrects fonts in situ, but I don't think you have to have Office 2007 installed - just the fonts.

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

If you read the "hot fix" instructions you will see that this update only applies to office 2007.

Plus i tried it anyway and it says that your system is not affected by this hot fix. meaning it doesn't do anything because it doesn't have office 2007.

I then checked the versions after a restart and they didn't change.

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

If you read the "hot fix" instructions you will see that this update only
applies to office 2007.

I have read the instructions and they say "There are no prerequisites for installing this hotfix." Yes, Microsoft Office Professional 2007, Microsoft Office Standard 2007, Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, Microsoft Office Basic 2007, and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 are listed, but that's because they contained the problem fonts. The fix affects the fonts, not the apps.

You ran the fix then restarted, but did you rebuild your Adobe font cache mechanism? That is an important step and you don't mention doing it.

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

I checked the version of the fonts in Windows\fonts directory, because they said it would change the version.

I did delete the AdobeFnt##.lst files after that, but that didn't fix the problem.

I did try the hot fix on 2 machines.
- one with Adobe CS3 and one without Adobe

The font versions were not changed in both computers tested, therefore it didn't work.

Eitherway it's all working now as posted previously

Have you tried the hot fix with Office 2003?
- Did it change the font version?

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

I checked the version of the fonts in Windows\fonts directory, because
they said it would change the version.

As I read the hot fix instructions, they don't say that the version will be changed (they just say "Not applicable"). They do say that the font properties will have changed, but you need MS's font properties extension to check that.

No, I haven't tried it with Office 2003. Frankly, I never use Arial Narrow, so I haven't even bothered to see if this is an issue for me.

[Gary_...@adobeforums.com]

I am still having problems with Arial Narrow and it is occuring on different setups.
One is WinXP SP3, Office 2003, InDes CS3
other is Vista, Office 2007, InDes CS3
Both systems do not show the bold, italic etc for Arial Narrow. I have tried the MS Hotfix on the Vista/2007 set up, no good. I have tried version 2.30 Arial fonts on XP setup, no good. I have delete Adobefnt.lst files, rebooted systems still no narrow bold etc on any of these.
I don't know what else to try and this is becoming a big problem now as a large range of jobs use Arial Narrow Bold/Italic.
Am I missing/not doing something wrong or are some systems more problematic than others?

[duckm...@adobeforums.com]

have you put a copy of the 2.30 fonts in the seperate directories.

Please see my existing post.

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

Are the fonts showing up in any apps? Are you sure they're installed?

[maryann...@adobeforums.com]

I am running Windows XP SP3 (we just had SP3 installed on our machine a couple of weeks ago). We have Microsoft office 2003 (3) and I have the Adobe Master Collection CS3. Today I went to open our newsletter masthead which has the type in Arial Narrow and I discovered that Photoshop no longer 'sees' the Arial Narrow font other than as Arial described in the messages above. InDesign works fine as well as Word. I downloaded the hotfix suggested but when we went to install it we received a message that this machine or programs did not need this hotfix. Also did a reinstall of the fonts from the site mentioned in one of the replies above and cleaned the cache of the AdobeFnt#.lst, but still no Arial Narrow in Photoshop. There were no problems before the upgrade a few weeks ago and have since used that font in InDesign with no trouble at all.

Any ideas of what to do next. Arial Narrow is one of the fonts that we use corporately so changing it isn't really an option.

thanks
MP

[Connor_...@adobeforums.com]

duckmiester - Read this entire thread and several others, it seems you are the only one having the same exact problems I am.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me the fonts you have.

outcastmv - gmail.com

Thank you!

CH

[Gary_...@adobeforums.com]

All Arial Narrow now working for me now that I followed duckmiester's previous instructions as below.