One typeface in a font family will not display

Question

Roboto bold and bold italic typeface will not display in Word or other MS Office. The other five Roboto typefaces in this font family display fine. All Roboto files show up in Settings/Personalization/Fonts and in C:/windows/fonts folder. One online suggestion was to remove Word add-ins, but Word thinks I am not an administrator. Have just checked this and I am an admin even though Word does not recognize it. I guess I really have two problems!

Running Windows 11. Using Word 2010. All the fonts, including Roboto bold and bold italic, display in Notepad, a non-Office application.

I just installed these Roboto fonts, so something went right up to a point: ten of the Roboto fonts are viewable and two of them are not viewable in the Office apps. So I can't say the problem is inherent in running 2010.

Suggestions for getting the two missing Roboto fonts to display in Office apps is appreciated! Thanks.

Answer 1

This is the way I understand MS Office's font logic, and this sort of thing and building templates for design agencies is my full-time job...

Fonts are typically organised in groups of four font files. If we assume that the font is called "FontName", we'd have:

• FontName Regular
• FontName Bold
• FontName Italic
• FontNameBoldItalic (i.e. bold AND italic)

Now, if Office finds such a group of four, it displays only the "Regular" font. "Bold" is automatically mapped to the "Bold" button, "Italic" to the "Italic button" and Bold+Italic is applied when both buttons are pressed. This is why the remaining three font files aren't selectable in the Office font dropdown.

And this may be what you are seeing. It sounds like "Roboto Bold" and "Roboto BoldItalic" are mapped to the corresponding buttons. So,,, it's a feature, not a bug, and you haven't done anything wrong.

BY the way - what happens if you don't install "FontName Italic", for instance? Then Office falls back to calculating an italic version of "FontName Regular". It looks Italic, of course, but looks pretty crappy compared to a proper Italic file, designed carefully. Same with Bold.

So this is what will happen with, say your "Roboto Medium" if you don't have a "Roboto Medium Bold" file (which is quite likely, as Roboto Medium is already pretty... erm... fat.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

That is not what is occurring.

Roboto isn't showing in the list ... not in any MS app.

The reason I found is the Roboto version from Google fonts is not compatible ... despite being "valid" through Mac Font Book.

When tossed the Google version and installed the Font Squirrel version it worked.