# Duplicate fonts in FontExplorerX



## mspain77 (Dec 28, 2006)

I ahve 3,000 active fonts, 2,200 of which are postscript fonts. Those are the best for my purposes.
Everytime I have to launch Word or Powerpoint (these are the files our marketing people seem to deal with), I ALWAYS have to deactivate the postscript fonts or else the apps will crash EVERY time.
After using the sorry Microsoft apps, when I try to reactivate all of my postscript fonts, I am prompted with a warning that 'I am trying to activate a postscript font which is the same name or family as another font that is already activated.' It says that having duplicate fonts activated could lead to problems, and I know that.
My question is:
Does anybody know of a way to have FontExplorer find all duplicate fonts and give ME the option of which font file type to keep active and which to deactivate? I would like to keep all the PS fonts active in the situation of duplicates, not the TTF's or OTF's or anything else.
Any thoughts? Thanks again guys.


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## simbalala (Dec 28, 2006)

This is not a direct answer but you may find this new article from arstechnica helpful and interesting. I learned a few things from it.

The Mac OS X font managers review


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## mspain77 (Dec 29, 2006)

Thanks for the link Simbalala. I'll check it out.


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## Natobasso (Dec 29, 2006)

Also, turn off auto activation for those Office apps if you have that on. And, turn off general auto-activation.

Tools/Plug in Manager/Turn off "Automatically activate requested fonts by Plug ins if possible".

I find my InDesign and Illustrator both have issues with auto activation.


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## Natobasso (Dec 29, 2006)

You can use Tools/Clean System Fonts to try to mitigate your font conflicts. This will remove all but your required System Fonts from your System/Fonts folder.

Go to View/Show Conflicts to see other font issues in your font sets.

Go to View/Customize... to show Font Family, basic and then you can list your fonts by type (Postscript, Type 1, etc.)


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## mspain77 (Jan 3, 2007)

Okay Nato, I didn't have the auto-activation on for the Microsoft apps, nor the "Automatically activate..." thing. I already had the cutsomized view set to show fonts by format, plus I had made smart sets to separate them. I guess I'll have to manually deactivate non-ps fonts when the problem arises and trach them if I have a ps replacement.


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## Natobasso (Jan 3, 2007)

So is everything okay? Wasn't sure from your post.


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## mspain77 (Jan 3, 2007)

Well...I still have the issue with not being able to just tell the app to deactivate all duplicate fonts' non-postscript versions. It's not really a malfunction&#8211;I was just trying to streamline my process. I'm thinking that it can't be done any easier. Thanks for the tips though.
I posted another thread regarding an issue with Arial. Wanna' take a stab at it?


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## Natobasso (Jan 3, 2007)

Uncheck 'Group Font Families' and then click the Format tab. All fonts will be visible grouped together by type and you can select and remove the ones you don't want. Click and hold the shift key to select more than one font.

I see your Arial post but can't respond directly to it. I sent you an email response though. Let me know what you think here in this post.


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## mspain77 (Jan 3, 2007)

I don't see the format tab.


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## Natobasso (Jan 3, 2007)

right click in the upper right where 'Name' is and you can choose what options to display. Choose 'Format'.


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## mspain77 (Jan 3, 2007)

Nice!! Thanks a nuch Nato. I think this will make it a lot easier. It should've occurred to me to not group in families but rather individually to easier select and deselect particular conflicting fonts.
What do you suggest for determining which fonts are corrupt?


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## Natobasso (Jan 3, 2007)

Corrupt fonts are usually red in the FE list. If you have a font utility like Font Cache Cleaner that might be good. Repair permissions regularly. 

A lot of times with fonts I just find one that works and go with it. Arial is similar to lots of other fonts like helvetica, etc. It's more a workaround than anything else. 

Make sure to keep a copy of all your fonts somewhere so if your local copy goes bad you can just copy it over from your fresh set.

By the way, are you storing your fonts on your server or on each local station? I recommend not using fonts regularly from a server; only the local machine.


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## mspain77 (Jan 3, 2007)

All of my secondary fonts are stored in my user font folder. No server fonts. I repair permissions a few times a week. Arial is not in red. None of my fonts are. Should I just trash any fonts that are in red in ever I come across one?
I don't have any utilities like that. Versiontracker I guess?


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