Two virtually identical Windows 7 PCs. Only one reports missing fonts in InDesign?

Question

We have two virtually identical Windows 7 (x64) PCs, both running InDesign CS5.5.

One of them had to be reinstalled from scratch and, unfortunately, its fonts were lost in the process as they were not backed up along with the rest of the user data.

The PC with the missing fonts has had all of the fonts from the following location copied across from the good PC to its equivalent folder:

c:\Windows\Fonts

Unfortunately, InDesign still complains of there being missing fonts when attempting to open InDesign files (which open with no such problem on the other PC).

Both PCs have the same fonts in the Windows font directory and the InDesign font folder is completely empty on both computers:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS5.5\Fonts

As far as I can see, both computers have exactly the same fonts and yet only one produces font errors when attempting to open certain InDesign documents.

What could I be missing here and is there anywhere else on the good PC I should be looking to find these fonts?

Answer 1

I don't use Indesign in Windows, but I do on a Mac, and this may be helpful. On the Mac side, Indesign looks first for fonts in a folder called "Document Fonts" located in the same location as your .indd file, BUT that Document Fonts folder needs to have an Adobe font cache file in it too. These cache files are small files called AdobeFntXX.lst, where XX can be any number, like AdobeFnt13.lst. So if you copied your Indesign file to a different identical computer but didn't copy it's Document Fonts folder with it, it is possible the file will have no issues on the first computer, but have font missing errors on computer #2.

Hope this helps.