font management hates me help

[austininin]

hello all,

i am experiencing a problem with font management on my mac. i usually do pretty well, but i am totally stumped, so here's what's going on. maybe someone has some insight....

OK the other day i accidentally added all of my fonts into font book. that was VERY bad. apparently you can't 'undo' that, so i tried to remove them from font book. it then stated that it would delete my font files, which i'm not sure if it meant non-system or system. anyway, i get to a point where i turn everything off that i don't want and there are still stray fonts showing up in illustrator.

this leads me to where these extra fonts are turning up in my font menu, which is driving me absolutely insane at this point. they're not turned on in font book and not turned on in suitcase fusion (which is what i use). i thought maybe deleting my illustrator plist files would do the trick and 'reset' the font menu, but nothin. the only thing i can think of now is to either remove and place those stray fonts on some cd just in case or just delete all of them. but then that makes me worried that the computer will get screwed up and i will be in worse luck. and i keep thinking that if i delete them, illustrator, etc. will still show the fonts in those brackets and pretty much laugh at me for being an idiot.

sorry for the long explanation, but i am about ready to throw something.

it seems like font management should be as easy as turning the things on and off, but not the case this time. i am absolutely stumped.

i wish that the answer this time was 'get a mac' huhuhuh

thanks i hope somebody has some info!

[largemammal]

get Font Explorer. then end.

Font Management - Simple, Smart, Free - Linotype FontExplorer X

[Papercuts]

get Font Explorer. then end.

Font Management - Simple, Smart, Free - Linotype FontExplorer X

.

[austininin]

it is a lot nicer than suitcase fusion. unfortunately none of my emails in osx mail are showing up now. they're there, but some font is missing i guess. this is turning into a nightmare ha

[austininin]

if anyone has any helpful suggestion why i'm not able to see my email, please feel free to let me know. hafta download thunderbird for now ugh. at least that works!

[thejuice]

it could be that a system font that your mail uses is either turned off or deleted.

[Dusty!]

if anyone has any helpful suggestion why i'm not able to see my email, please feel free to let me know. hafta download thunderbird for now ugh. at least that works!

google it there are a bunch of pages that answer this, they have screen shots so you can figure out what font is missing.

[danstiles]

google it there are a bunch of pages that answer this, they have screen shots so you can figure out what font is missing.

yeah, osx keeps fonts in 4 different places. Dusty is right, google it and there are articles will tell you where everything is. For the most part you wind up having to move everything except your system fonts.

I have everything all hooked up on my machine and I still sometimes get some weirdness with Helvetica.

osx font management is badly thought out.

[danstiles]

it could be that a system font that your mail uses is either turned off or deleted.

yes, this is mostly likely the case. Change your mail font and see if it starts working again.

[austininin]

i ended up referring to my backup drive. copied all of my files over to the computer and restarted. mail worked fine, but some other programs stopped working. and my ipods/thumb drives weren't being recognized. i am giving up and reinstalling everything. thank goodness for external drives. thanks for the input dudes. what a freaking long day!!! also, thanks tecate.