Entourage - Kerning or Character Spacing Issue: The letters are all jumbled together
 

We have been having this problem with Kerning or Character Spacing since we got Entourage 10.x. After calling Apple Care, we were told that it is our own isolated problem. We had an ibook G3 and were hoping that getting a MacBook would solve it. No luck. We have tried updating and reinstalling to no avail. No one will claim it as their glitch - not Apple or Microsoft. So what is wrong? We can't even really tell who we are sending emails to! All of the letters are jumbled together as if the character spacing is on -100 or something awful. We have been trying to fix it for a year and a half. We have version 11.2.5. It did not do this to us on Entourage 9.0. Any suggestions? :( http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/...0/Jumbled2.jpghttp://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/...0/Jumbled1.jpg

So far as I know, Entourage does not have built-in kerning capabilities. What "Style" and "Font" and "Font Size" do you have selected? Is this a problem with ALL mail, both those you compose and those you receive?

Try changing the font or font size and see what effect that has.

Joe VanZandt

Yes, please answer JDV's question, then tell us where the font that you have selected is installed on your computer? Then tell us if you are using a font manager, including Font Book, and whether you have turned off any of the fonts in /System/Library/Fonts, and whether or not you have installed your own same-name versions of any of the fonts in /System/Library/Fonts.

Trevor

It is not a font issue. check out our blog to see the issue. erikandbet.blogspot.com It is in the MENUS. It is not in the messages. It is in the menus and the to cc and bcc places. and then when you go to choose which "matt" you want from your address book you can't see what your choices are.

check out these pictures i took.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/...0/Jumbled2.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/...0/Jumbled1.jpg
You can even see that the "subject" and "attachments" are messed up as well. Not the things themselves, but rather the labels. The words are messed up. Thanks for your help.

I think you're going to need to change permissions on the files on that link--at least, I was unable to access them.

But this simply HAS to be a font issue, it would seem. Perhaps the default font that Entourage uses for its menus is corrupted? I can assure you, I have no such problem with my copy. It may not be my favorite mailer (for other reasons), but it seems to behave normally on my system.

Joe VanZandt

I could not access your liks above either.

Entourage works fine for me...at least as far as font rendering goes. My bet would be conflicting fonts.

As has been mentioned above, your links are forbidden. However, your logic in the post above is flawed, since the menus obviously use fonts.

Trevor

www.erikandbet.blogspot.com

we are also from the chicago area...

No more Mrs. Nice Girl
 

Don't tell me my logic is flawed. That is just rude. You look at it, dude. Look at the link that DOES work. Look at the pictures. LOOK. You tell me that is a font issue. Tell me. Really. Better yet, tell me how to fix it! You tell me what to do about it, and tell me you are smarter than all the techies we have talked to. I am looking for a smarter guy than you here. And if you can't give me more than your trite comments, then get off this post. This is a serious issue that is more than you can handle, "obviously." I started out being all innocent but I don't want to be anymore because there are people like you who come in and act like they know everything when they are "obviously" just coming in here to find helpless computer babies. I am not one of them. Look at our blog. Look at it. Then you come back to me and throw down your comments. Try to avoid words like obviously and flawed logic next time, eh? Especially since we have spent over 15 hours at the Mac Genius Bar, 12 hours on the phone with Apple care and sent the thing in multiple times. C'mon, dude. I am not playing "helpless little computer rookie" here. Give some real solutions next time.

I apologize if my statement offended you. However, your logic IS flawed. Your computer uses fonts to display the text in the menus. You have a font problem, and if you insist on not believing me and the other posters to this forum, you will not be able to fix the problem. That is the case, no matter how many people at the Mac Genius Bar tell you otherwise.

Thank you for attaching a picture. It shows a font problem.

If you want to fix the problem, please answer the questions that I asked you in post #3 and JDV asked you in post #2. Without answers to those questions, we cannot help you.

Trevor

The only time I've run into something quite like this is running an early version of an application in Classic mode under OS X. The contextual menus did get screwed up, which I attributed (though never really investigated it very deeply because we had a machine with a very early version of the Mac OS just for this program, and so I didn't HAVE to run it as a Classic app very often) to the liklihood that the program was set to use a particular font that no longer existed on my computer and the substituted font was a bad fit.

Somehow, I think this must be the same phenomenon. The contextual menu in Entourage is set to use a particular display font that is messed up on you system. But that this persists through a completely -new- operating system is quite puzzling, for presumably it isn't reasonable to think that the exact same font is corrupt in both places. However, it would be good if you could confirm that in the preferences for Entourage, under fonts, that your system shows the font for item lists is Veranda at 9 points. That's what it is set to on my system and seems to display properly. If, somehow, that got changed, perhaps it would have the effects your screenshots show.

Joe VanZandt

Try the free FontExplorer for X
 

Hi,

I have had several kinds of "Font Madness", all of which I fixed using Linotype's free font utility - download it from here:

http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX

Quit all applications

Under the tools menu, use "Clean system font caches" and "Clean application font caches". Restart. Then check for conflicts. I seem to remember that running it for the first time automatically give this option.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Nick

Any other ideas?
 

Thank you, Nick, for finally being the one with a real solution. I tried your download and it did not work. Alas, this is a big problem with no good solutions. It must be a glitch or a bug. I would appreciate any help I could get on this. it is just so bad! Yuck. No one out there seems to know how to help.

Anyone? Does anyone know how to help us? Please? My husband and I are near the end of our patience with this! Anyone have any other ideas?

Thank you.

In response to help
 

Ok, I am supposed to answer these questions. We are using the following settings (see picture).
It is a problem only with the menus for US. Not a problem in the body of the emails or with the text outgoing or incoming.

As far as I can see, you have not answered the questions that were asked.
Also, please try logging in as a different user to see if the problem exists there. (Create a new user via the Accounts preference panel if you only have the one user account so far.) You will of course need to set up an email account in Entourage for that new user.

I tried the entourage font preferences and they don't seem to apply to the fonts that are bunching up in your screen grabs.

I don't know if there's anything useful here (links below). The quote is from the second link. Maybe check your FontBook for the fonts listed for any duplicates or corruption.

http://www.entourage.mvps.org/
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Disable-Fonts.html

"Where the Office applications (only) are concerned ... do not disable these fonts:

Arial
Batang
Gulim
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro W3
Lucida Grande
MS PMincho
MS Gothic
MS Mincho
MS Pgothic
MT Extra
PmingLiu
Simsun
Symbol
Times New Roman
Verdana
Wingding

We have it on the authority of the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit that these fonts are necessary to the proper functioning of Microsoft Office 2004."

What Style, Font and Font Size
 

See attached pdf for picture of screen.

Some answers
 

I do not want to create a different user because this is the account from work. We are using a personal computer because they do not purchase Macs at work but only allow us to use them if we own them ourselves. Therefore we have to work out the issues on them ourselves as well. It is a small business without enough tech help to give us any support for the Macs. We can't set up another account at this point.

Honestly, I don't know the answers to the other questions. I don't really understand what you are asking. I guess that seeing I did the suggestion from a previous post, that I now have a font manager as of yesterday. But I have not deleted fonts nor renamed them. Moving them has never been my doing and would only have happened if a program had done that. I can't think of a program that would have done that. I have had this same computer the entire time. I am trying to fix the problem on my old computer before trying to fix it on the new one.

Any other questions I need to answer?

That is a great website and I had a little hope for a minute. But to no avail. It did not work. Thanks, though!

I fail to understand why you can't set up another user account. If you own this machine then "work" should not have a say in what accounts you create on it.
Trying things out with a different user account is one of the main troubleshooting steps to try when you encounter any problem with OS X.
So it is exactly because you "have to work out the issues on them [y]ourselves" that you should create a new user account and see if the problem exists there.

Besides, the alternatives at this point might be narrowing to either living with the problem or reinstalling the whole OS.

Hmmm. Arial is not a fixed-width font. You should use the name of a fixed width font (Monaco, Courier, or anything with Mono in its name) for "Plain Text Messages (fixed width)". However, this is not the cause of your font problem in the pulldown menus, it's just a tip so that your plain text works properly.

OK, let me try to ask the questions in a different way, with the information you gave above in mind:

1. What applications did you install on both the problematic old computer, and the new computer after you got it? Please be detailed and mention everything, but especially mention any 'font packs' where fonts are installed, or utilities that may do something to your fonts.

2. You have a program called Font Book in your /Applications folder. This is installed as part of the operating system by Apple. Have you ever launched Font Book?

3. It is important to start a new user on the computer, as others have mentioned. It only takes 30 seconds--go to System Preferences > Accounts > Click the lock icon and authenticate > click the + icon to create a new user. Now log in to the new user, launch Entourage, and tell us if the problem continues in the new user.

4. Have you run TinkerTool on these computers? In it, have you changed any of the font settings? Are you using any other kind of programs that change the appearance of your computer's operating system in some way?

Trevor