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galaga · Sep 19, 2006, 11:30 AM

This is the weirdest thing that ever happened to me with a Mac.

I'm currently setting up my new Macbook and I downloaded a lot of fonts that I used to have installed on my Powerbook but didn't have saved.

It turned out to be a bit more of a drama than I expected because there was about 450 of them and Stuffit made a bit of a meal of things. In the end I spent most of my Sunday downloading, unstuffing, opening .bin files, opening, installing and checking. But I got there in the end... 478 or so, hand picked fonts all installed in Font Book.

Now I've just tuned on my computer and couldn't see them in TextEdit. Okay, so I've forgotten to turn on user fonts, no problem. But no. I've just opened font book and there are no user fonts showing up at all. They're all gone! Totally blank. I've also checked the fonts folder in my library and it is empty.

All 478 fonts seem to have completely vanished. But how could this possibly happen? I haven't hacked OS X in any major way or anything. It is completely insane. Needless to say I'm confused but also pretty pissed off; I can't face going through downloading and installing them all over again. But more to the point what the hell could possibly be going on?

Thorzdad · Sep 19, 2006, 11:50 AM

You didn't happen to install the fonts under an administrator account and then look for them in a standard user account? If so, I'm willing to bet you didn't have the "share fonts with other users" selected.

Also, you really should burn all your fonts to a cd for archive purposes. As you've seen, it can be a royal pain to re-collect hundreds of fonts.

Chuckit · Sep 19, 2006, 11:50 AM

Are you sure you put them in your library, and not someplace else? Have you tried searching for one of the file names?

galaga · Sep 19, 2006, 12:16 PM

@Thorzdad- My account is the admin account and is the only account on the computer, so that can't be the problem.

@Chuckit- I thought that when you installed them they automatically went into Library>Fonts. But yes, I have tried a spotlight search on one or two of the filenames and... nothing.

Thanks for the input though guys. This is so strange.

Thorzdad · Sep 19, 2006, 12:25 PM

Have you rebooted since you installed the fonts?
Did the fonts show-up in FontBook as you were installing them? They're supposed to show up in the Font list as they are added.

galaga · Sep 19, 2006, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

Have you rebooted since you installed the fonts?
Did the fonts show-up in FontBook as you were installing them? They're supposed to show up in the Font list as they are added.

Yeah, I have rebooted. I only just tried to use the fonts today and it was Sunday that I installed them but they definitely showed up under 'User' in Font Book because I remember going through them and checking for duplicates etc.

Now they seem to have just gone without a trace. I just can't see how a whole bunch of fonts could vanish... that would be one hell of a bug. But then, I know that I definitely installed them and they definitely showed up in Font Book and I haven't done anything unusual to my computer in the meantime. I'm bamboozled.

Thorzdad · Sep 19, 2006, 01:58 PM

Wow. I'm stumped, too. Short of repairing permissions and deleting your user/library/preferences/com.apple.FontBook.plist file, I'm not sure what else to suggest.

There are 3 different places fonts are stored:
MacintoshHD/Library/Fonts
MacintoshHD/System/Library/Fonts
User/Library/Fonts

You've looked in all three folders? Your fonts should be installed in the User/Library/Fonts folder. Never the System subfolder.

If you do a search for, say, Arial, nothing shows up? ( I say Arial because that's one of the most common, non-System, fonts that most people have.)