[HOWTO] get around Microsoft Office corrupt font issue

[jason.sellers]

Dear old Micros**t can't even answer this one!

If you have a problem in word or excel, where you are told you have corrupt fonts, (they aren't, it's a microsoft issue), simply delete FontCacheTool from your machine, (use Apple–F to find it) It's part of the office package, so won't affect anything else.

Empty your trash and voila!

Word and Excel now start up as they should.

Why Microsoft think that they can handle fonts better than OSX or suitcase, I'll never know. It also makes me wonder what exactly this tool is doing!

[imdave]

Thanks for this tip! This has been driving me crazy for about a week. I found no solution on the MS site. I found this and fixed the problem in about 2 seconds.

[PippinX]

Oh I've deleted many fonts just to run MS Word!

[Ivy]

Thank you! It's been driving me batty.

[bethrosengard]

Someone just pointed out this thread to me and it contains some misinformation and questionable advice so I thought I'd better comment on what Jason said in his post. Here goes:

Jason said: Dear old Micros**t can't even answer this one!

No they can't. That's partly because it's such an inconsistent bug that they have been unable to replicate it in house; and it's partly because it's very likely to be an Apple bug.

Jason said: If you have a problem in word or excel, where you are told you have corrupt fonts, (they aren't, it's a microsoft issue), simply delete FontCacheTool from your machine, (use Apple–F to find it) It's part of the office package, so won't affect anything else. Empty your trash and voila! Word and Excel now start up as they should.

This is the questionable advice I referred to. Yes, it's true that deleting the FontCacheTool *appears* to solve the problem. It solves nothing. What it does is turn off the mechanism that notifies you when your fonts are corrupt; IOW, it prevents the problem from coming to view by eliminating the "font optimization" process from occurring.

Secondly, if you ever have to trash your Office Font Cache, you will lose WYSIWYG display of your fonts (which may or may not matter to you).

Finally, unlike the Office and System font caches, The FontCacheTool is not recreated automatically when you relaunch an Office application. The only way to restore this tool is to do a proper removal and reinstallation of Office.

So, DON'T delete your FontCacheTool. If you have tried all the other known workarounds for this bug and you get no joy, then archive or rename the FontCacheTool so you can restore it if needed. And be sure to do so before updating Office every time!

Much more on this bug here (including less severe workarounds): <http://word.mvps.org/mac/CorruptFontErrors.html>

Jason said: Why Microsoft think that they can handle fonts better than OSX or suitcase, I'll never know. It also makes me wonder what exactly this tool is doing!

You should know by now if you've read the above: It controls the font optimization process; it allows WYSIWYG for fonts; it warns you when fonts are corrupt (and probably more that I'm not aware of).

HTH,
Beth
<http://www.word.mvps.org/mac/WordMacHome.html>

[SNance]

Jason, Thanks for the tip about trashing "FontCache"! It saved what little sanity I had left with regard to Microsoft products

[teszeract]

Hi

This tip refers, I think, only to Office 04, not V.x. On this version I still cannot find a solution. My problem is actually worse: while Word attempts to load, cycling through a Optimizing Font Menu message, all other applications including some Dashboard ones come crashing down.

[uncledeercamp]

Thanks for the tip. This worked perfectly.

Even if it did cost me the WYSIWIG menus...

Oh, dear God! What have I done???