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Fonts Not Appearing in Flash Font Lists

by Josh on Dec.06, 2005, under Development, Flash, Mac

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.



18 comments for this entry:
  1. Tim King

    I was having this problem today. I noticed that the font I was trying to install kept going into the Font folder in the Library of the User that I was logged in as. I moved them to the Font folder in the root Library folder and it the font showed up next time I started Flash. Might work for others…

  2. Randy B.

    WOW!!! This worked like a charm…the funny thing is it has been puzzling me for years now. Thanks a lot!

  3. Michael W.

    Thnaks for this, I had to quit Flash, turn off the font in question. Quit FontAgent Pro, re-launch it, turn the font back on. Quit FAP again, then relaunchg Flash, and there it was! Stupid cache!

  4. Stephen Matthews

    This still exists in Leopard - although it could be CS3’s fault - oh well there goes another half hour before the deadline!

  5. Niqui Merret

    looks like its not fixed in CS3 either. Thanks for saving time b blogging this :)

  6. chris

    cheers heaps! deadline looming and flash decides it won’t find the font i need, your trick worked a charm. brilliant.

  7. seb

    Thanks for sharing!! Works perfectly and saved me a lot of time!

  8. will

    man, thanks so much for this post. you’re a life saver!

  9. Ian

    Not working for me.

    HELP!!!!

  10. Mike

    I’ve tried the steps in your post and still can’t get certain free TTF fonts to show in CS3. Even some _ADOBE_ OTF fonts don’t show!

  11. James

    I’ve been trying everything! Nothing works!!

    I’ve tried fontdoctor/fontbook/suitcase/calling apple!

    Illustrator CS3/Textedit = OK

    Flash CS3/Word08 = Fonts missing??!!

  12. James2

    ok i realised that the simple fact was i had too many fonts for flash… i deleted them all except for a few basics in fontbook. now i have ‘activated’ the ones i need in suitcase (i worked out how to use it or yesterday it wasn’t working)…

  13. Ian

    HOLY CRAP. Cant get these fonts to work!!! any ideas???

  14. andy

    hey I have the same problem but I’m opening fla’s made on a mac in flash cs3 on windows… it says i don’t have arial bold , arial bold italic and a whole heap of other fonts which I do have installed..

    i guess your solutions are mac only, does anyone know of a fix for PC?

  15. rose

    I’m having the same problem on PC. Flash can see other fonts in the family but not the one I need.

  16. Samantha

    OMG!!! I have tried EVERYTHING. I’ve installed, uninstalled, disabled, enabled, restart programs, restart computer, I even went through and disabled every font I don’t use and still I cannot get my font to open in flash.. I am at my wits end here. Any other ideas? Is there another font folder for adobe besides the one in the application support?

  17. Samantha

    Well, if anyone ever comes across this article, I solved the problem for myself.. if you are using mac, make sure there are not too many fonts in the user-library-fonts folder. Once I took out all the other fonts it showed up in flash. Also FYI in CS3 you can’t use open type faces, so if that is what you are using that may also be the problem. Try to see if your font has a true type version and it should work. Good luck!

  18. daniel

    The one solution that worked for me was removing all my user fonts and then installing only the fonts that were not showing up in flash. Then afterwards i just installed the fonts that i actively use, instead of installing all my fonts and turning them off on font book.

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