Search and replace fonts / Replace missing fonts when opening a document

[Red Al]

For example, when I import an IDML (inDesign) document, Publisher tells me: "Document contains missing fonts".
Now I can click "Manage fonts" and in the fonts management window theoretically replace the missing font with a font that exists on the computer.
So I select the new font on the "Substitutions side", which is possible, but after that there is no button "replace" that would replace the fonts for the whole document. There is only a button "close"

Mac Os Monterey 12.4 MacBook Pro 14"

[Komatös]

Hi @Red Al and welcome to the forums.

You can use the find tool to search and replace fonts in a bunch.

[Red Al]

Unfortunately, this does not work with this tool, because it is more intended for exchanging words or already existing fonts. It does not even allow you to enter a non-existing font in the search mask.

The idea of the above mentioned feature, however, is a completely different one: namely, that a font, which is embedded in the document, but the paths to it are missing or it is not even on the computer, can be relinked or replaced by another, new font and that for the whole document.

It should then work like this:
Affinity Publisher detects a missing font in the document and reports this. Now the user can use the "Manage Fonts" tool to replace the missing font with another one. The tool already offers the mask, but the "replace" button and the action that applies this command to the whole document is missing. Either this is a bug or the tool is not programmed to the end.

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, Red Al said:

It should then work like this:
Affinity Publisher detects a missing font in the document and reports this. Now the user can use the "Manage Fonts" tool to replace the missing font with another one.

I agree there should be some way of dealing with replacing, not just temporarily substituting, missing fonts from the Font Manager dialog.

Using  the Find and Replace panel works well for finding missing fonts here on Mac, I enter nothing in the Find box and use the Cog wheel to choose Format

 

and then use the Missing Fonts from the dropdown menu in the dialog

Then just choose the font that you want to use as a replacement in the Replacement section, again leaving the text area blank.

Note that you will have much better luck if you first replace all the fonts in the various Character and Paragraph Styles. I am fairly certain that there are warnings issued about missing fonts if the Text Styles have a missing font as part of a definition.

[Criss]

This also doesn't work.  Because then you're replacing all missing fonts with 1 font & font-style, when you may have many missing fonts (say from a PDF document) and thus they're not assigned to text styles, so now you're globally replacing all missing font styles with 1 font style. Disaster.

So if I want to replace Minion with Helvetica Neue — but Comic Sans with Impact (I dunno making this up) I can't do it from that dialogue. But I COULD from the Font Manager if they added the option to make that change permanent instead of just temporary. Add 1 more column to the Font Manager with a choice of substitute temporarily or replace permanently.  While at it — want to make it SUPER helpful? Give a choice of replacing a font with a text style (paragraph & character) as well. Same drop-down menus could have a horizontal line and list the paragraph & character styles.

We're looking at saving significant time on the user end for a couple programmer's time on the back-end. Note there's some features folk would pay a bounty for — if it's cost of implementing features that's a concern. But this could use the current search->replace tech so it's not totally reinventing the wheel.

I eventually ended up making a Keyboard Maestro macro to locate Paragraph marks that were still Minion Pro that ought to have been the text style of the heading they were in — so no actual Minion Pro visible characters were used (I get that a paragraph mark is for all intents & purposes still a character; I'm a coder also) — and hit the Paragraph Style reset button so that the end character of the paragraph wasn't in an "off" font. Not sure why it happened but somewhere between InDesign & Affinity Publisher it ended up weird. So a search-replace to reset these heading paragraphs to their base style would have been nice. The work-around is a total kludge telling it where to click on the screen.

[carl123]

9 minutes ago, Criss said:

so now you're globally replacing all missing font styles with 1 font style. Disaster.

It does not work that way

10 minutes ago, Criss said:

So if I want to replace Minion with Helvetica Neue — but Comic Sans with Impact (I dunno making this up) I can't do it from that dialogue

Have you tried it?

 

[Red Al]

On 7/15/2022 at 6:27 PM, Old Bruce said:

I agree there should be some way of dealing with replacing, not just temporarily substituting, missing fonts from the Font Manager dialog.

Using  the Find and Replace panel works well for finding missing fonts here on Mac, I enter nothing in the Find box and use the Cog wheel to choose Format

 

and then use the Missing Fonts from the dropdown menu in the dialog

Then just choose the font that you want to use as a replacement in the Replacement section, again leaving the text area blank.

Note that you will have much better luck if you first replace all the fonts in the various Character and Paragraph Styles. I am fairly certain that there are warnings issued about missing fonts if the Text Styles have a missing font as part of a definition.

Hi, this may work if you want to change an existing font but not a missing one. Publisher must automatically display the missing font. How should I know the name of the missing font?  It looks like the idea was there but the programmer forgot to programme the function. Do you now know how to actually change a missing font in Publisher 2 successfully, automatically, without a workaround? That would be wonderful...

[Old Bruce]

20 minutes ago, Red Al said:

Hi, this may work if you want to change an existing font but not a missing one.

Follow the instructions. Go to the Find and replace Panel. Use the silly little cog wheel to choose Format. In the resulting dialog choose Missing Fonts from the dropdown menu from the Font Family in the Font section.

[MikeTO]

16 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Follow the instructions. Go to the Find and replace Panel. Use the silly little cog wheel to choose Format. In the resulting dialog choose Missing Fonts from the dropdown menu from the Font Family in the Font section.

I learned something today, thanks! I didn't realize that missing fonts would be in a separate collection.

To clarify for Red AI, this is from the dropdown that defaults to All Fonts, to the right of Font Family.