Bullets appear as Boxes in all documents

[henebry]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi. I'm using Word 2008 (12.2.3) on an Intel Mac Snow Leopard (10.6.2). I was having a problem superficially similar to one that mwheat reported about a week ago, but with this crucial difference: I didn't have access to bullets in any document (i.e. they appear as empty boxes). The only bullet that worked was the tiny bullet; all the others showed up correctly in the Formatting Palette, but showed up as empty, non-printing boxes in my documents.

While writing up a query to the forums, I managed to solve my problem. But I'm posting anyway, since another user, pnate, responded to mwheat's thread with a problem just like mine.

My problem turned out to be caused by a font conflict. I knew that Word 2008 uses the Symbol font for text bullets. So I fired up Font Book application and learned that I have a number of different Symbol fonts installed. These show up in Font Book as

Symbol
      • Regular
      • Regular
      • Symbol

By control-clicking and choosing "Reveal in Finder" I learned a bit more about each of them:

• Symbol.ttf (Windows truetype, version 6.1d7e3) installed in System/Library/Fonts
• symbol_o.ttf (Windows truetype, version Version 1.60) installed in Library/Fonts
• Symbol (font suitcase, version 1.0) installed in Library/Fonts

Font Book reported a font conflict with the third one (Symbol font suitcase), so cntl-clicked on it, chose "Resolve Duplicates" and deactivated that font. I quit and restarted Word, but the problem with bullets persisted.

Font Book did not report a conflict between the two Windows truetype symbol fonts (Symbol.ttf and symbol_o.ttf). It listed them both as "Regular" typefaces under the same "Symbol" heading. But, when I clicked on them in Font Book, they were radically different, showing different characters, not just different shapes for a given character.

I suspect that symbol_o.ttf is an Office-installed font that's in some sort of conflict with Symbol.ttf. I didn't want to turn off Symbol.ttf, since it's a system font. So I deactivated symbol_o.ttf instead. (In Font Book, both look the same ("Regular&quot, but you can tell them apart by "Reveal in Finder&quot.

This did the trick: after quitting and restarting Word, I was able to see my bullets appear correctly.

Once again, the solution for me was to deactivate ALL copies of the Symbol font EXCEPT for the copy in System/Library/Fonts.

 

[CyberTaz]

Thanks for taking the time to provide such a thorough, accurate & eloquent
reference I'm sure many will benefit from your findings.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Yes!! I couldn't agree more strongly.

All my fonts are in System/Library/Fonts... That "automatically" resolves a
lot of duplicates.

The careful analysis you have done is what it takes to resolve these issues.
Taking the time to write it up for us is excellent: now everyone else can
use the same method and resolve their problems also!

Yes, there is a bug that means duplicate fonts with different internal lists
of characters will cause problems in OS 10.6 with Word 2008. We know it's a
bug. We don't know whether it is Apple's or Microsoft's bug, or when, or
even if it will be fixed.

In the meantime, this is what you need to do to resolve it so you can work


Cheers

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
Hi. I'm using Word 2008 (12.2.3) on an Intel Mac Snow Leopard (10.6.2). I was
having a problem superficially similar to one that mwheat reported about a
week ago, but with this crucial difference: I didn't have access to bullets in
any document (i.e. they appear as empty boxes). The only bullet that worked
was the tiny bullet; all the others showed up correctly in the Formatting
Palette, but showed up as empty, non-printing boxes in my documents.

While writing up a query to the forums, I managed to solve my problem. But I'm
posting anyway, since another user, pnate, responded to mwheat's thread with a
problem just like mine.

My problem turned out to be caused by a font conflict. I knew that Word 2008
uses the Symbol font for text bullets. So I fired up Font Book application and
learned that I have a number of different Symbol fonts installed. These show
up in Font Book as

Symbol
• Regular
• Regular
• Symbol

By control-clicking and choosing "Reveal in Finder" I learned a bit more about
each of them:

• Symbol.ttf (Windows truetype, version 6.1d7e3) installed in
System/Library/Fonts
• symbol_o.ttf (Windows truetype, version Version 1.60) installed in
Library/Fonts
• Symbol (font suitcase, version 1.0) installed in Library/Fonts

Font Book reported a font conflict with the third one (Symbol font suitcase),
so cntl-clicked on it, chose "Resolve Duplicates" and deactivated that font. I
quit and restarted Word, but the problem with bullets persisted.

Font Book did not report a conflict between the two Windows truetype symbol
fonts (Symbol.ttf and symbol_o.ttf). It listed them both as "Regular"
typefaces under the same "Symbol" heading. But, when I clicked on them in Font
Book, they were radically different, showing different characters, not just
different shapes for a given character.

I suspect that symbol_o.ttf is an Office-installed font that's in some sort of
conflict with Symbol.ttf. I didn't want to turn off Symbol.ttf, since it's a
system font. So I deactivated symbol_o.ttf instead. (In Font Book, both look
the same ("Regular"), but you can tell them apart by "Reveal in Finder").

This did the trick: after quitting and restarting Word, I was able to see my
bullets appear correctly.

Once again, the solution for me was to deactivate ALL copies of the Symbol
font EXCEPT for the copy in System/Library/Fonts.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]