Resolving the fonts to question marks in Safari and Mail issue

Question

Resolving the fonts to question marks in Safari and Mail issue

Since upgrading to Sierra, on my merry way through upgrading my mac to get as up to date as I can, I have found that Safari and Mail are showing loads of question marks instead of words. Obviously its a font issue and the fonts that should be displayed are maybe not being found to be rendered as they are.

I have scoured the forums a bit to see if I can find a resolution. I haven't read anything which explains things fully.

I am not using font Book application and am unsure how fonts are managed without font book or other font management software installed.

I had installed Font Explorer X to manage fonts but have also deactivated it and this has little to no bearing on the rendering of the actual fonts. When font explorer x is activated then when opening up and using safari and mail I get repeated requests for fonts which are not activated, many of which are not on my system. Fonts such as Google Sans, Paypal Sans, Myanmar Sangam MN, Market sans are names which appear. Its rather erratic and I am trying to comprehend what the issue is in order to resolve it.

I did find a temporary solution in Font Explorer X cleaning the system font cache. I got this message also (See image) and was wondering if this offers insight into what the issue is. Once the cache is cleared then a restart is required and this can give a short term solution until the Mac goes to sleep during periods of inactivity. Once re awakened then the question marks reappear.

Any experts out there able to offer any insights at all?

Many thanks for any positive contributions.

Mac Pro, macOS 10.12

Posted on Oct 8, 2020 10:06 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Anthony ÓDoibhailein Author

Level 1

33 points

Oct 26, 2020 9:00 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

Just an addendum to this.

Having gone through numerous possible solutions, restarts, cache clearing, installing/reinstalling software etc, I eventually tried just removing a few fonts and importing them again to Font Explorer X. Ones that were generating the question marks. These appeared in sites such as ebay and in many messages in Mail. I found out what they were by copying the question marks and pasting them into Pages to see what they were. Though the fonts were already installed in the fonts folder and also into Font Explorer X they didn't load in those browser pages in Safari and also Mail.

I did replace one of the fonts with another fresh downloaded version (Helvetica Neue) and reinstalled a couple of others.

Problem solved.....so far!

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Answer 2

Oct 9, 2020 3:42 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hello Tom, I note the comment below which gives you some acclaim! Hopefully this is something you can bring to this issue!

I don't use Font book usually but have been using Font Explorer X which has a series of other cache and conflict resolving instructions.

I did disable FEX and restarted using Font book but as I mentioned above Font book has no impact on this issue.

There is definitely a font management issue here which is presenting itself in a couple of different ways. The question marks and the requests from FEX to install fonts which I don't have installed for Mail, Notifications etc such as the ones I mentioned earlier.

It is very frustrating after doing the upgrade to Sierra. Its making some pages on say ebay or other sites and emails unreadable.

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Answer 3

Oct 9, 2020 9:12 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks for the link.

Theres a lot to consider in this regards Font Book and using font management software.

I have found that by doing the part of the process of removing font book has alleviated the issue. The question marks are gone for now but the questions aren't!

Having got rid of the question marks I have found that I can reproduce the same again when I start up Font Explorer Pro X so I shall nip over to their support and see if there are any recorded issues and solutions. There is obviously an underlying issue regards where fonts are installed and how they are being managed. So I have a partial solution as I still require Font Explorer Pro X to manage several thousand fonts used for design work.

I shall post back with an update shortly. Thanks again for the link.

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Answer 4

Kathykate

Level 2

248 points

Nov 20, 2020 4:02 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

Here was my similar problem and fix.

A certain email from John Lewis would often show up with the question mark icons showing. If I copied and pasted the question marks into, for example, a Word document, it showed up as the .LastResort font. I believe this is the substitute font Mac uses for fonts it can't 'find' or is having difficulty with. So first I had to find out what the actual font was it was having trouble with. To do this, I opened Gmail online/through my browser, found the email. Online, the email read OK, with no question marks. When I copied and pasted the online email text into Word, I discovered it was Gill Light my Mac was having a problem with. Then I went to my Font Manager, which is FontExplorer (I'm a graphic designer, I have hundreds of fonts). Found all my Gill Sans fonts. Turned out I had some duplicates. I switched off a set of duplicates, and immediately the rogue email showed correctly, I didn't even have to do a Mac restart. So, I deleted that bunch of duplicates from the font manager, and I hope the problem will clear permanently.

Before I found this fix, I was clearing the font cache from Font Explorer, and then restarting, which would clear the problem but only temporarily. Hope this might help someone.

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