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Restoring OS X Fonts

B

battletops

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 22, 2006
23
0
I recently decided to copy all the fonts from my old PC to my new MacBook Pro. Big mistake. After installing all the fonts in Font Book, the fonts in Firefox (and maybe in a few other apps that I don't know about yet) got mixed up, causing it to be barely usable. For instance, the application's font seems to be a mispositioned Arial variation, and the search and url inputs both look like Lucida Console.

I read a possible solution that required deleting duplicate fonts, but that didn't work.

All I want to do now is restore my fonts to the way they were originally. I have access to the original font folders (on another mac), so I was wondering if I could simply copy the two font folders into the messed up folders on the MBP from the Windows partition. Would this restore the fonts, or is there an easier/better way?

EDIT- Websites and website inputs render exactly as I would want them to. The problem is with the fonts for the application itself. Reinstalling doesn't help, and no other applications seem to be affected.
 
Before you restore your fonts, have you tried resolving the duplicates (as opposed to deleting them) in Font Book via the Edit menu? It can take a couple of goes to work properly and as is the case with all font work, you should close all apps beforehand. :)
 
This problem also seems to affect Netscape and Google Earth, though it isn't as bad with these programs.

I really don't have many customs fonts, so all I really want to do is restore the fonts. If I duplicate the font folders from a clean install of OS X, will those changes automatically be reflected in Font Book, or do I have a lot of work to get my fonts back to normal?

This would probably be a great time to have Time Machine.
 
Can you or someone else explain how I could use Pacifist to reinstall only the fonts?
 
I'm actually experiencing the same problem with my new MacBookPro. I uploaded several open fonts to my Mac from my Pc. The fonts are suppose to w work on both a mac and a pc.

Now when I view some web pages I'm missing some letterss on the page or the letters of some words run together.

How can I restore my ooriginal default fonts without run ning a restore disk or is that possible?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
Although I don't have extensive experience with OS X, my guess is that some of the original fonts used for certain apps to work properly got replaced with improper versions from Windows. I hope that by replacing the font folders, the original versions of the fonts will allow the apps to work properly again.

If not, I really don't know what to do. How could copying fonts from Windows do so much damage?

I've had to use Safari, and I'm starting to really miss Firefox.

EDIT- When you copied the fonts, did you copy all of your fonts, or just a few novelty fonts. If all you did was copy just a few, I don't know why this would affect programs like Firefox.
 
Sorry, somehow missed this thread for a while. :eek:

Before adding or removing fonts, start up in Safe Mode (boot holding SHIFT) to see if it's simply a cache problem. Safe Mode should clear these out for you. :)
 
Not sure if I can say the same for bittersweet, but Firefox is now functioning PERFECTLY thanks to your advice. I can't thank you enough for suggesting that I restart in Safe Mode. In fact, I'm surprised with myself that I didn't even try restarting. Perhaps that would've fixed this problem as well.

Thank you so much. These forums really great!

By the way, I deleted about half of the fonts that I had transferred from my PC, so I have a really messed up font configuration. But, after all of this, I think I'm gonna leave everything just like it is. It's just not worth it. :)
 
Excellent. You should be able to add fonts at will. They key to adding them correctly is to do a few at a time and to make sure every other app is closed. Use Font Book and you can't go too far wrong. :)
 
battletops said:
Not sure if I can say the same for bittersweet, but Firefox is now functioning PERFECTLY thanks to your advice. I can't thank you enough for suggesting that I restart in Safe Mode.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, rebooting in safe mode didn't work for me. I've gone in and got rid of all of my duplicates and theat seemed to fix most of the problems I was experiencing. I still experience some font readability issues on some sites using firefox. Especially when I'm trying edit code in my Web site administration's CPanel or if I try editing HTML code in my Wordpress blog. It doesn't display the text, just lines.

I've never had to restore anything from my restore disk, If I run the OS 10 restore can I pick and choose what I want to restore or will it reset everything. I've added Mac Office and am running Windows XP using Parallels, so I'd prefer not to have to reinstall of this software.

Appreciate any suggestions...
 
Well, the restore discs will allow you to do an Archive & Install which would keep all your settings and files, but reinstall the system files. This might be a good idea if you've somehow managed to delete some system fonts. Alternatively, you could use an app called Pacifist to extract the relevant files you want from the restore discs. :)
 
the easiest way to restore your default fonts is to delete all font file localed in:
system/users/username/library/fonts/

then copy the fonts from:
system/library/fonts/
to:
system/users/username/library/fonts/

then restart

good luck!
 
phumanchu38 said:
the easiest way to restore your default fonts is to delete all font file localed in:
system/users/username/library/fonts/

then copy the fonts from:
system/library/fonts/
to:
system/users/username/library/fonts/

then restart
Click to expand...

I tried this, but it caused new problems. Here is what eventually worked for me (on a MacBook Pro running Tiger, in case it matters):

In Font Book, select all fonts, CTRL-click, and select "Remove." It will notify you that you are removing system fonts, but this is OK. (It leaves two fonts on anyhow, so everything is still minimally functional.) I restarted the system here, but I doubt it was necessary. Now I had a second login account on this machine, so I copied that account's Fonts folder into the Shared file and made sure both accounts had access to it (i.e., Select the Fonts folder you just copied, hit Command-I, check/fix the permissions). Back in the font-free account, copy all the fonts in the shared folder into Font Book to install them. Reboot. All's well (hopefully).

Absent a second account on the machine, try using Font Book to install the fonts from "system/library/fonts/" rather than just copying them over to the other folder. This avoids leaving a set of locked files mixed in with the unlocked versions OS X creates (when it installs what it finds in the Fonts folder upon rebooting) and avoids making a series of duplicates. Really, not much different than phumanchu38's advice, but does not lead to duplicates or to locked font files in your own folder, so there is less clutter and other minor issues.
 
make sure you have these fonts activated. that's what helped me.
  • Andale Mono,
  • Arial,
  • Arial Black,
  • Comic Sans MS,
  • Courier New,
  • Georgia,
  • Impact,
  • Times New Roman,
  • Trebuchet MS,
  • Verdana
  • Webdings
 
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