4 Replies Latest reply: Jan 10, 2014 8:06 AM by Mike Gondek2 RSS

    Font problems

    steveprc Community Member

      I've searched everywhere for help on this matter, so I'm hoping someone has experience with this and can point me in the right direction for a fix.

       

      I work for a Japanese company, and they send me instruction manuals that they create in Illustrator. When I open the files here, I get the expected "Font Problems" error that states, "The Document "XXXXXXX" uses fonts or characters which are not available or are in a different format than originally specified." Then it goes on to list all of the fonts in the document, half of them Japanese characters, and the other half English. Here's the rub - Illustrator automatically substitutes fonts, and it's not always the exact same spec as the original font. So, things move around, text extends beyond the limits of the text boxes, text alignment with other objects wanders, etc. So, I would like to know if I can make my computer compatible with, and install the four or five fonts on my machine that they have on their machine  so I don't run into the font substitution issues. A second caveat is the English fonts - you would think that this would be a no-brainer, but even Helvetica and Helvetica-Bold are showing as not being found on my system, when in fact the is installed. I don't have all the Helvetica fonts, but many of the most common and this shouldn't be flagged as not found on the system. For those that really know the inner workings of Illustrator, is this a double-byte character issue, or a MAC/PC thing? Rregardless, if there's a solution to these issues, I could really use the help.

       

      Although it may be of no consequence, here are the fonts in use in the documents:

       

      Helvetica

      Helvetica-Bold

      GothicBBB-Medium-83pv-RKSJ-H

      ShinGo-Medium-83pv-RKSJ-H

       

      Any help would be much appreciated.

        • 1. Re: Font problems
          Jacob Bugge CommunityMVP

          Steve,

           

          As mentioned recently, Illy is very sensitive to font names, and there may be issues between formats (Open Type, True Type, Type 1, etc), which may especially appear in cross platform transfer (Win/Mac).

           

          Having their fonts should solve the issue; if you can get them through their possibly extended licences, it would even be legal.

           

          Apart from that, I believe this is one for Harron.

          • 2. Re: Font problems
            John Danek Community Member

            There are slight differences between Mac fonts and PC fonts.  Open typefonts are supposed to be compatable with both Mac and PC.  So, I would think if you can get your hands on the same fonts they used, as long as they're Open Type, they should work.

            • 3. Re: Font problems
              JonPatterson Community Member

              I was getting the same error... "the document uses fonts or characters which are not available." I was also getting the Find Font dialog window opening by itself. Although, my issues started happening at random when I opened a file I hadn't edited in a couple days. After much digging around I think it had something to do with my font management software. I had recently upgraded to Suitcase Fusion 4. Although, I hadn't made any changes to Suitcase prefs or font activation so I'm still not sure what happened.

               

              In Illustrator I went to Type > Suitcase Fusion 4 > Suitcase Fusion 4 Autoactivation Preferences > and UNCHECKED Autoactivation. Not sure why that worked but it did!

              • 4. Re: Font problems
                Mike Gondek2 Community Member

                This problem comes from multiple master font technology (eg: 83 is how bold the fonts is under MM), that was left behind by Apple & Adobe and is no longer supported.. This can be one of the more difficult problems to remove, but if you follow all the steps exactly, you will have success.

                 

                 

                Font Locations

                 

                • Macintosh HD/Library/fonts/
                • Macintosh HD/system/Library/fonts/
                • Macintosh HD/users/(your name)/system/Library/fonts/
                • Macintosh HD/applications/Adobe Illustrator CS6/(ctrl click on app and choose view package contents)/required fonts (YOU CAN SKIP THIS ONE, SHOULD BE NONE HERE IN CS6)

                 

                1. find & remove all mm fonts (HelveLTMM, Helvetica LT MM, Helvetica????.dfont) from your system
                2. restart illustrator
                3. find and change your fonts
                4. save the file
                5. the problem will no longer come up on your machine
                6. if someone else opens this file on a machgine with mm fonts in their library, saves they can infect it again