If you use Flash on the Mac, you may have come across this issue once or twice. You receive a .fla, and when you try to open it, you don’t have the right fonts. No big deal. Get the font from the designer, install it, then re-launch Flash. Flash still can’t find the font, and it doesn’t appear in the font listing for the Text tool either. So, you then check some other apps, and sure enough, they can find the font and use it no problem. It’s just Flash that has the issue.

I honestly don’t know why this happens, because it doesn’t always happen. Just when I seem to have a deadline coming up. I think it may have something to do with the OSX Font Cache. Anyways, I think I may have found a solution, or at least something you can try if you’re having the same issue. I’ve used this on both Macs I use, and it seems to work pretty good.

  1. Close Flash.
  2. Install the font
  3. Close whatever font manager you use. Flash doesn’t seem to like having having a font app open when it launches. (I just use OSX’s default Font Book, so that may be part of my problem there, instead of some fancy font app like Suitcase
  4. Launch Flash, and use the Text tool to see if the font is available in Flash. If so, you’re good to go. Otherwise, keep reading.
  5. Close Flash.
  6. Open your font manager, then disable the font, and close the font app.
  7. Launch Flash while the fonts are disabled, then close it.
  8. Open the font manager, re-enable the font, and close it.
  9. Launch Flash one more time, and then that font should now be available.

There may be a better solution than this, and if so, I’d like to hear it. Leave a note in the comments if you have one.