Office 2008 breaks fonts during installation
I just installed the retail version of Office 2008 for Mac and ran in to a problem. After running the installer, I started experiencing font issues. Safari specifically was having issues. I’m not the only one who has experienced this; it’s an issue that reared its head during the Beta testing but apparently didn’t get taken care of completely before Office shipped.
Avoiding font issues when installing Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
It’s simple: When the Installer recommends that you close ALL applications, take the installer’s advice. If you do so, you should be in the clear.
Correcting font issues after installing Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
If you didn’t heed the installer warning and you’re reading this post, you likely have some interesting font issues. The problem stems from the installation of fonts which took place as a part of the Office 2008 installation. Here’s how to bring things back to normal:
- Open the Font Book application
- Look for fonts which have a circle indicator next to their name. This indicates that there are duplicate versions of the font installed.
- Expand the font and identify the variant (bold, italic, condensed, etc.) of the font that has the issue (or variants).
- Click on one of the font variants and click Command-I to Show Font Info
- Identify which of the fonts is the original version, and which was later installed (look for the “Duplicate” attribute toward the bottom of the criteria in the right-hand side pane showing the font information. If it says ‘yes’, this is the one you’ll want to remove).
- To remove the font variant, Control+Click on the font/variant name to remove.
- Continue to do this until you’ve removed all the newly installed, duplicated fonts.
- Restart your Mac. Everything should be back to normal.
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