Stumped by Word 2011 Mac again...

Josh_F

Just when I feel like I have a full grasp of tackling font naming for Word 2011 Mac, I'm thrown a curve ball...

I usually master typefaces with Reg, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic style linked, and then any other weights as a separate font family that only style link the upright with its italic counterpart.

Well, I have a client that is wanting files that have all the fonts show up under a single Word submenu, with no style linking.

Thinking this would be as straight forward as assigning all files the same standard macStyle and fsSelection values, I went ahead and did that, but keep finding styles missing from the menu and being style linked! I tried a zillion variations of macStyle, fsSelection, usWeightClass, panoseWeight, or any other values I could think of, and still the same results.

Eventually, I figured out that Word seemed to be reading the actual name ID, seeing the word "Book" and "Book Italic" and style linking on its own. To test, I even took an entirely different font, and added the words "Book Italic" into the appropriate name ID slots (still with no actual linking values anywhere), and bam, style linking in Word!

Is there any way around this?

I'm also having a totally different, incredibly weird and frustrating Word problem, but I thought I'd start with one issue at a time.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Josh

Erwin Denissen

I don't have the tools to verify this as the moment, but I suspect you need to ensure the fonts all have a unique font family name. This might involve several naming fields (font family, typographic family, and wws family).

Max Phillips

Once we've gotten rid of Twitter, can we get rid of Word?

Thomas Phinney

FontLab’s Adam Twardoch has documented how to deal with the particular issues of Word 2011 Mac, at least when using FontLab Studio 5.   https://forum.fontlab.com/fontlab-studio-tips-and-tricks/font-family-naming-in-fontlab-studio-5/

Of course, using a more recent version of Word for Mac is also helpful; Word/Office 2016 has been out for a while now.

Josh_F

Thomas Phinney said:

FontLab’s Adam Twardoch has documented how to deal with the particular issues of Word 2011 Mac, at least when using FontLab Studio 5.   https://forum.fontlab.com/fontlab-studio-tips-and-tricks/font-family-naming-in-fontlab-studio-5/

Of course, using a more recent version of Word for Mac is also helpful; Word/Office 2016 has been out for a while now.

Hi Thomas. I usually follow Adam's documentation for naming for Word 2011, but I just thought it was rather strange how regardless of any actual style-linking data in the files, Word seemed to "read" the actual word "Book Italic" and link it to the Book.

Peter Constable

Josh: Does your customer want to be able to click the "I" button on the toolbar or press Ctrl+I to toggle italics on and off?

If you succeeded in breaking the link so that Word listed both Book and Book Italic in the font list, then the italic toggles would no longer work.

Josh_F

Peter Constable said:

Josh: Does your customer want to be able to click the "I" button on the toolbar or press Ctrl+I to toggle italics on and off?

If you succeeded in breaking the link so that Word listed both Book and Book Italic in the font list, then the italic toggles would no longer work.

The "I" button isn't needed, which is why I'm trying to break the style linking so both Book and Book Italic show in the menu.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Hi Josh,

Well, I have a client that is wanting files that have all the fonts show up under a single Word submenu, with no style linking.

Always intrigued by what unexpected surprises Word has to offer and not being familiar with this problem, I checked what happens with DTL Elzevir, which contains both Regular and Book weights/styles, in Word for Mac 2011.



If I install all weights/styles at once in FontBook, the Book Italic is missing from the submenu.



I changed and checked the weight/style settings in different ways but this didn’t solve the problem, as you also noticed. I also played around with the font naming. For example, I renamed ‘Book’ into ‘Books’ in all applicable entries and nothing changed, but when I used ‘Boek’ (Dutch for Book) all weights/styles were visible.



However, if I install only the Book and Book Italic –after flushing the font cashes first– both show up correctly.



If I install subsequently the other weights/styles with exception of the Regular and Regular Italic, everything looks fine still.



After installing the Regular and related Italic, the Bold Italic has disappeared from the submenu. This is pure MS Magic!

BTW, in the last image I put the kerning on.

Mark Simonson

Adam Twardoch discussed this issue, why it happens, and how to work around it a few years ago on Typophile:

Recommendations for dealing with font problems in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Hi Mark,

Adam writes: ‘If normal Mac names don't match the normal Windows names, then styles disappear randomly’, but in case of the missing Bold Italic above the Font Family name and Font Subfamily names are identical for both platforms (no preferred names for macOS used in any of the examples above).

F.

Mark Simonson

Well, on the positive side, the user base for Word 2011 for Mac is continually shrinking.

André G. Isaak

Well, on the positive side, the user base for Word 2011 for Mac is continually shrinking.

Sadly, however, the user base for Word is not.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Josh_F

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland said:

After installing the Regular and related Italic, the Bold Italic has disappeared from the submenu. This is pure MS Magic!  

Well, glad to know I'm not the only one! Literally the exact same "magic" you experienced is what was happening to me. I'm fine with troubleshooting issues, but when there seems to be no apparent rhyme or reason to the problem, it can be frustrating to say the least.

rui_abreu

I think Word tries to group fonts based on their name, and fails.

I'm having this problem with these two families: Gliko Modern M and Gliko Modern Narrow M. Named with distinct family names.

Here how Word is grouping them:

Connor Davenport

rui_abreu said:

I think Word tries to group fonts based on their name, and fails.

I'm having this problem with these two families: Gliko Modern M and Gliko Modern Narrow M. Named with distinct family names.

Here how Word is grouping them:

@rui_abreu , how'd you go about solving this issue? I am running into a similar issue with Word (16.31 for Mac) where is "magically" takes part of the familyName and somehow uses it in the styleNames dropdown. Has anyone ran into a similiar issue? 

Joachimvu

@rui_abreu
I ran into the same issue for a family with a similar structure.
Setting fsSelection bit 8 ("Has WWS names" custom parameter if you're using Glyphs) on all styles that are Regular/Italic/Bold/Bold Italic fixed it for me.

Stephen Coles

Since Typophile is down currently, here's a Internet Archive cache of the Adam Twardoch post that @Mark Simonson mentioned.