Fonts do not appear in Word

Hi all, I am having problems with a font family I am working on. It works fine everywhere except on Microsoft software.

The family has 4 styles (Headline, Regular, Bold, Extrabold), named so at the request of a client. The font works with 3 axes of variation, one classic weight axis and two other custom ones.

On Word, however, only two styles of the four appear: the “Headline” style and and “Bold” style always appear, the other two are not there. I tried clearing the cache, changing the font name but it didn’t help. I tried to install both OTF and TTF version.

Since the font works with custom variation axes, I added the WWS name parameters like this:
FamilyName-Regular
FamilyName-Bold
FamilyNameHeadline-Regular
FamilyName Extrabold-Regular

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks a lot!


Word on Windows or Word on Mac?

Both have problems, but we tested it mainly on Windows

Update: I fixed the problem on Mac by setting the fonts as prioritized through the terminal. That works good but I don’t get what I’m doing wrong as without setting the font as prioritized they do not appear at all on Word (already cleaned the caches)

On Windows I tried to change the font name, rename the styles with RIBBI, remove unicodeRanges and codePageRanges parameters, change the axis into standard ones (weight, width, slant) but nothing works, only two of the four styles appear on Word.

Does someone has an idea how to fix that?
Thanks a lot

Take a look at this comment from Nicole. She says that for some old versions of Word/Windows adding PANOSE numbers to fonts may helps.

Also, for the test, try to temporarily change Headline name to anything else (changing one letter will be enough). I had very similar issue when using Poster as a last part of the font family name. In some applications that caused wrong order of styles, or Regular/Italic are not appear. I don’t know if it is the same case but it worth to try.

Hey Michael, thank you for the answer. Just tried adding Panose but the problem is still there.
I also already tried to change the styles name but doesn’t work.

It only works if I export the styles with a different family name, but then of course it’s not possible to switch to bold pressing “cmd+b”.

But i think somehow it should be a naming problem, maybe i’m wrongly using some custom parameters for naming. Should I have WWS name parameters and “full names” “font name” parameters too? I tried to remove all of them but doesn’t help.

The WWS names shouldn’t be needed. They are the same as the font/style name (name id 1/2) as generated by Glyphs.
Can you show the setup of the other two instances?

And why do you have three axis and only four instances (and two seem to be on the same axis)?

Thanks for the answer. Here you see the setup of the instances.
I tried to remove WWS names but it doesn’t work. In Word only 2 cuts appears (always the Headline, even if I change the style name into a standard one, and sometimes appear Bold sometimes Regular).

There are three axis because the font is much bigger than 4 styles, the original font has 35 styles. This one it’s just a custom version for a client who need exactly this four cuts. The third axes “Outside Corners” is actually not needed for this custom font so I removed it, but it doesen’t help.

Can you run your font files through fontbakery.com? Maybe it finds something that relates to the name table.

Hi there.
I had a similar issue and after checking everything else I found out that word had a limit to how many font it would display. So try uninstall some other fonts and see if that works for you. It worked in my case.
Best,
A

Hi all, thanks a lot for the answers.
I was able to solve the problem by adding “Style Map Family Names” parameter to each style, for bold and regular I just entered the family name, while for the two special styles I entered family name+style name together. Also call a style “Black” instead of “Extrabold” helped (no idea why)

1 Like

That is what Glyphs would do automatically. can you compare the name table (with our Font Table Viewer) if there is a difference with your approach and the default from Glyphs?

I compare them in Font Table Viewer, with and without the “style map family names” parameter and there is no difference actually, but without the parameter the font still does not appear in Word. I tried also in different computers

Would you mind sending me the two different exports (one that works and one that doesn’t) in a private message? I would be keen to have a look.