Okay, I know this happens to a lot of us…that there is a missing font in the
document…like this one for example. There's a missing Garamond Premiere Pro
Semibold and you don't want it there. So, how do you find out where it is? Well,
this is a short document…there's not that many pages in it…it's a template
from InDesign Secrets. So I could, you know, probably scroll through here and
look for the dreaded pinking. That is the default composition highlighting that
InDesign applies when fonts are missing. So like right here there's a bad boy.
I'll click on it and zoom in a few times. And you can see up here in the Control
Panel that the font is missing because it has brackets. Now, the fastest way to
find these guys is to use the Find Font dialog box. And you may have seen there
was a button that would have led me directly to there when I opened up this
document and I got the missing font message.But you can just come up
here and choose Type > Find Fonts. It would be a really great idea if you would
create a custom keyboard shortcut to this because you'll probably be using it
a lot in your work with InDesign. So here's the missing font. Now, the main
thing I wanted to show you was—well I've been using it so it's already showing—
but typically when you open this up, if you select the missing font, the one
with the yellow triangle, it doesn't give you that much information other than
what do you want to replace it with. But you might want to find out where it's
being used. And to do that, you could choose Find First, and then Find Next and
so on, one by one, or click the more info button down here. And then you'll see
lots of information about where is that font being used, how many characters is
it being used for. You know, sometimes the missing font is just being used for one
character that you forgot to switch out. This one is not being used that often…
just 31 times. It's used in one style called 'lead-in.' And then it tells you the
pages that it's, that it's on, including the pasteboard. So let's go ahead and fix
the style. So I'll click here and open up the Character Style panel because
I know lead-in is the character style that is accidentally using semibold. So
I'll click here, and instead of semibold, I want to change it back to the Adobe
Garamond Pro. And we'll just say regular. Let's leave it at regular. And now that's
all done. And do you remember there is some text in the pasteboard, too, it said?
So, I'm zooming out to see where it is. Or I could go back to Find Font and just
click Find Next. Ah…there it is. I don't need that at all…that's probably just a
test over there in the pasteboard. I'll delete that. And then the final one…I'm
really not seeing any pinking. Are you? So, let's come back to Find Font…but
before I do that, what I like to do is to zoom in really closely, like with
Command- or Ctrl-2. That'll zoom in to 200%. And then go to Find Font, because
when you say Find Next, it'll center it in the screen and it's a
lot easier to see when you're zoomed in. So I'll select this. There's only one
more character being used on page 11…Find First…get this guy out of the way.
There it is. I'll click Done so we can take a look at it. It's just a space
before a return. Sometimes another tip is to when you say find the next one
and notice that it selects it then you can go right to the Edit menu and choose
Edit in Story Editor where you'll see the same text selected here. Sometimes
it's a little easier to see in Story Editor, because you're not looking at any
formatting. So, if the bad boy character is in a very light font, a very small
font, sometimes it's easier to see in Story Editor. And there you can decide
what to do with it. In this case, I'll just delete it. And now when we look at
Find Font, no horrible yellow triangles. Yay! So that's the fastest way to find
missing fonts in your document…is to use the Find Font dialog box, especially
looking at the 'more info' section that's usually hidden. And that way you can
learn much more information about the font being used, where it's being used,
how many characters, and so on.
Hey, I hope you found this tip helpful. Be sure to check out InDesignSecrets.com for thousands of
InDesign articles, to listen to our podcast, and to download a free sample issue
of our monthly magazine called, "InDesign Magazine." Thanks for learning with us!"