Word now only recognizing the bold font of my Adobe Pro typefaces--Powerpoint and Excel work as expected

Anonymous
2020-08-17T03:45:00+00:00

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me with a weird thing where two of my Adobe Pro fonts stopped working properly in Word. This is occurring both on my 365 account on my home computer (iMac Pro) and my Office 2019 license (MacBook Pro 13" 2017) on my work computer. Both are running the latest Catalina (10.15.6). I only just noticed the problem in the last few days. So I don't know if it was a recent Microsoft update or what. Everything was working well before I went on vacation at the end of August [edit: I meant end of July].

The two affected typesets are Adobe Garamond Pro and Adobe Caslon Pro. Long story short, the version of Word on my 365 subscription (16.40 20081000) and my Volume License 2019 (16.40 20081000 & and on the most recent prior version of 16.39) both are acting as if I only have Adobe Garamond Pro (and Adobe Caslon Pro) bold on my system. So all my text is now bold. Word is able to see that I have regular, italic, and semibold (as it lists them as part of my fonts), but when I try to manually select regular, italic, or semibold it ignores my request and still shows only bold (with a checkmark next to it indicating that I have selected bold). No matter what I do, it only allows me to select bold for those typefaces. Other typefaces seem to work fine, though I admit I have not tested them all. 

Importantly, this problem does not occur with Powerpoint or Excel. When using those applications, the Adobe typefaces work as expected. Those applications see that I have regular, italic, and semibold and it lets me choose among them. Same when I use the Apple Pages application. Everything works as expected there.

Anywho, Adobe Garamond Pro is my go-to typeface for work, and so now I'm in a pickle. 

I'd appreciate any help you might be able to offer in tracking this problem down.

Best,

Tomas

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2020-08-27T14:36:11+00:00

I just launched Word on my work laptop and it was still exhibiting the problem even though this computer already had the new Adobe Acrobat Reader update. BUT, I then launched Acrobat and asked it to read a PDF that had Adobe Garamond Pro as the typeface. It loaded up fine in Acrobat of course. I then quit Acrobat and launched Word and Garamond Pro started working on this computer too! So MAKE SURE YOU LAUNCH ACROBAT on your computer, as RebCran indicated. I'm not sure if Garamond Pro must be in the PDF you launch, but that's what worked for me.

Tomas

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-18T11:40:43+00:00

    The weirdness continues. I had a friend test things out on two of his computers. First, on his iMac Pro (2017), which is still running High Sierra but the latest version of Word 16.40. He activated Adobe Garamond Pro from Adobe Creative Cloud and everything worked fine. He then tested it on his MacBook Pro 16" (2020) which is running Catalina and the latest version of Word 16.40. And this is where it gets weird. He can select regular, but he cannot select bold or bold italic. When he tries to bold the text, it forces him to use semibold. And when he tries to select semibold italic, it gives him regular instead. 

    EDIT: In light of what others have found, namely that a fresh install will sometimes work when Word is first launched but then not again, I would need my friend to go back and test it again on High Sierra. It is possible that if he launched Word today it might be broken even on High Sierra.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-08-17T23:29:39+00:00

    Just came across this other thread elsewhere of people having the same problem. No solution offered yet:

    https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/399216/word-problem-with-adobe-garamond-pro

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-17T22:40:28+00:00

    Ok, but so why do all of my other Open Type Postscript fonts still work well in Word? I have many of them. Garamond Premier Pro, for example, works flawlessly. And Adobe Garamond Pro has worked for the last 5 years or so, and only stopped working about a week ago? Thanks, T

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  4. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 437.7K Reputation points
    2020-08-17T22:33:15+00:00

    Re: "...but I don't think that is it."

    Think what you will :-) but Word uses a new typography engine which no longer supports PostScript fonts... That includes OpenType with PostScript Outlines. The only type supported in Word are OpenType TrueType (OpenType with TrueType Outlines) & TrueType.

    Re: "And again, Adobe Garamond Pro still works with Excel, Powerpoint, Pages, etc. Seems to only be Word that is bugged"

    The fonts work with other software because those programs don't use the same engine. They provide none of the advanced features you'll find by going toFormat> Font - Advanced in Word.

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