Troubleshoot font problems

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PowerPoint's Replace Fonts feature is a useful tool for diagnosing and correcting font problems. It can help solve problems like:

• Characters "piling up" at the beginning of each line of text
• Text spacing problems
• Text box positioning and sizing problems

To use it, open the presentation you want to work with, then ...

• In PowerPoint 2003 and earlier, choose Format, Replace Fonts from the main menu bar.
• In PowerPoint 2007, go to the Home tab, and in the Editing group, click the down-arrow next to Replace and click Replace Fonts.

The Replace Fonts dialog appears:

Look at the upper of the two list boxes to see a list of the fonts used by your presentation.

Next to each font, there will be an icon.

Any fonts with a ? icon next to them are missing; PowerPoint displays the text unpredictably. If it (or rather Windows/Mac OS) can find a close approximation of the original font to substitute, it won't look too bad. If the substitute font is way off, the text display will be way off too.

In some cases (usually when a Type 1 / PostScript / ATM font is missing) you get the dreaded "Text Pile-Up". All of the characters in a line of text pile up together at the beginning of the line.

The Fix

Either locate and install a copy of the needed font or select the missing font in the upper list box then select a replacement for it in the lower list box and click Replace. This will permanently replace the missing font with the font you chose.

Note that you can't replace Far East (or other double-byte) fonts with standard single-byte Windows fonts. See This presentation might contain Far East text and formats that PowerPoint can't display

Will Replace Fonts find ALL instances of a font?
No. PowerPoint MVP TAJ Simmons has researched this and found that Replace Fonts finds fonts in:

Slides, of course
Slide Masters
Notes pages
Embedded objects (like pasted spreadsheets, graphs and org charts)

It won't find and replace fonts in

Pictures and WMFs/EMFs
Bitmaps (JPGs, BMPs, PNGs, etc)

But you can ungroup then regroup pictures to convert them to PowerPoint shapes; then PowerPoint will be able to find and replace fonts in the pictures too.

Remember to check all the "master" pages for your rodent font.

Search terms:font,replace

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