Arial Narrow Bold Font is not usable in programs after install

Question

I have tried installing a few Arial fonts such as Arial Narrow bold on a Windows 7 machine, and can't get the font to be usable after I install it. The Arial font family, including Arial Narrow Bold, shows up in the Windows font folder, but I can't use all of the Arial fonts in Photoshop, Word, etc.

I have uninstalled and installed a few times now, with differing results each time. Sometimes certain Arial fonts are usable while others are not, and then after I re-install some other Arial fonts become usable while some that were once usable are now not.

I am wanting to use the whole Arial font family - including Arial Narrow, Narrow Bold, Narrow Italic, etc. But can't seem to get them all to be recognized by the programs I use.

Answer 1

I do not have a solution for word, but the incomplete font list problem with respect to Adobe I have encountered many times. The usual solution for this is to create a shortcut to the windows fonts folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts (omit the (x86) if you are on windows 7 32-bit)

The adobe docs say to make duplicates of the fonts or shortcuts of the fonts in this folder, but making a shortcut to the entire font folder works, and it has the benefit of not having to update this folder every time you install a typeface.

Note also, that in an Adobe program, whenever it feels it can, it will group families, so you might have to select arial, and then in a secondary drop-down, you select regular, light, bold, medium book etc.

Answer 2

For cleaning the font cache (as a commenter mentioned above), CCleaner is a good choice.

I'm not 100% sure this will fix your problem, however, it's a pretty easy thing to try.