Display font is horrible

  • Thread starter Jeremy Fieldsend
  • Start date
J

Jeremy Fieldsend

I've just installed Office 2004 on a new iMac with 10.4.7. The font
used by Office to display things like menu options and the buttons in
the tool bar are of a sort of corrupted font - it looks like dodgy
dot-matrix font. Any ideas how to get it to behave properly?

Many thanks.
 
D

Diane Ross

I've just installed Office 2004 on a new iMac with 10.4.7. The font
used by Office to display things like menu options and the buttons in
the tool bar are of a sort of corrupted font - it looks like dodgy
dot-matrix font. Any ideas how to get it to behave properly?
Click to expand...

Options to check:

ˆ Check your System Preferences | Appearance | font smoothing preferences.

ˆ Font Cache could be corrupt. Delete the folder
/Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS and restarted the machine.

ˆ Create a new User in System Preferences and check for the problem there.
This will tell you if it's a system level problem or specific to your User
folder.

ˆ Go through Troubleshooting Fonts:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html>

More info on fonts:

<http://word.mvps.org/mac/disable-fonts.html>

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
J

Jeremy Fieldsend

Diane said:
Options to check:

ˆ Check your System Preferences | Appearance | font smoothing preferences.

ˆ Font Cache could be corrupt. Delete the folder
/Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS and restarted the machine.

ˆ Create a new User in System Preferences and check for the problemthere.
This will tell you if it's a system level problem or specific to your User
folder.

ˆ Go through Troubleshooting Fonts:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html>

More info on fonts:

<http://word.mvps.org/mac/disable-fonts.html>
Click to expand...
Thanks Diane.

Tried all your suggestions and sadly - no joy. But I have some more
colouring in on the issue: I have an administrator's account on the
iMac and the problem does not exist there. I set up a new 'test'
account and it was fine too. So I then deleted the offending account,
set up a new one which displayed the same problem. I copied the Library
folder from the malfunctioning account to the new one and perhaps the
error is in there? The reason I did that was because when I deleted an
account on another machine and set up a new one all the emails (and
account details) in Entourage were lost and I was keen to avoid this
happening again.

I realise that this may indeed be a seperate issue, but if there is a
way of deleting a user account and saving the emails and using them in
a newly created account, then I could simply delete the malfunctioning
user and start again?

Many thanks
 
D

Diane Ross

Tried all your suggestions and sadly - no joy. But I have some more
colouring in on the issue: I have an administrator's account on the
iMac and the problem does not exist there. I set up a new 'test'
account and it was fine too.
Click to expand...

This indicates problems in the User folder. It could be preferences or
database corruption. If you follow the steps on Troubleshooting Basics you
can identity the source of the problem.

So I then deleted the offending account,
set up a new one which displayed the same problem.
Click to expand...

It's not clear when you say account is this a new User or a new Identity?
Did you delete an account in an Identity? More Info:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/glossary/identity_user.html>

If you a deleted an account, this will not solve database problems.
If you deleted an Identity, this will not solve corruption in the User's
Library preferences.

Rename the Microsoft folder located here to Microsoftold:
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Entourage Preferences

Move this file to the desktop:
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Entourage.plist

Restart and launch Entourage. If the problem still exists, do the database
rebuild. Short instructions on rebuilding:

Quit all Office applications (including Entourage and Notifications).
Hold down the Option key and re-launch the application.

Full instructions here:
I copied the Library
folder from the malfunctioning account to the new one and perhaps the
error is in there? The reason I did that was because when I deleted an
account on another machine and set up a new one all the emails (and
account details) in Entourage were lost and I was keen to avoid this
happening again.
Click to expand...

Entourage does not store your data in the Library folder. Your mail is
located here:

Entourage 2004: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities/your
identity

Preferences in your User's library folder:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Entourage Preferences
I realise that this may indeed be a seperate issue, but if there is a
way of deleting a user account and saving the emails and using them in
a newly created account, then I could simply delete the malfunctioning
user and start again?
Click to expand...

Moving your Microsoft User Data folder to a new User would solve any
problems in the User's Library folder. It will not solve database
corruption.

For all file related to Entourage see:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/path/index.html>

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
J

Jeremy Fieldsend

Diane said:
This indicates problems in the User folder. It could be preferences or
database corruption. If you follow the steps on Troubleshooting Basics you
can identity the source of the problem.



It's not clear when you say account is this a new User or a new Identity?
Did you delete an account in an Identity? More Info:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/glossary/identity_user.html>
Click to expand...

It's the User account I deleted and then set up a new one. The problem
is not confined to Entourage (or Office) it seems. It's an OS thing I
think.
 
D

Diane Ross

It's the User account I deleted and then set up a new one. The problem
is not confined to Entourage (or Office) it seems. It's an OS thing I
think.
Click to expand...

Do an Archive and Install of the OS. "Archive and Install" moves existing
system files to a folder named Previous System and then installs Mac OS X
again.

Just be sure to check Preserve Users and Network Settings when you select
Archive & Install.

If you have any questions about doing the archive & install see the Apple KB

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120>

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
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