Font Forum

In my list of fonts, there are about 30 or so in the Active Fonts list that have red spheres next to them.

In the context menu, "install" and "uninstall" are grayed out.
They are not listed in MT's registry errors list nor in MT's invalid font resources list.
They are all ttf and otf fonts.

They don't have any entry in the registry:
My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

Several don't exist in the file system anywhere (they don't show up in an "everything" search)

How can I fix this?

Just a note here so folks know I use the search function in the forum:
From this post:

Re: Unable to get rid of "active" fonts

Unread postby Erwin Denissen » Fri Jan 11, 2013 8:57 am
Robin, I'm glad you told us you did solve the issue by rebooting.

A little background information might help other uses as well:

The fonts you tried to remove were fonts unknown by MainType (e.g. fonts with red "unknown fonts" dots). You will see such fonts when other software load fonts without providing information about the exact location of the fonts. Then there is no way of retrieving additional information about the fonts, and it is not possible to uninstall/unload/deactivate such fonts.

This problem never goes away. There is no way to "ignore" any of those fonts, and so there is no way to clean up the mess since MainType is doing all the font managing here. I don't understand how MainType can't realize that other programs do, indeed, install fonts in the fonts folder for their own uses.

I've got one font in red - that I made myself using FontCreator - that is not in the Fonts folder, is not in the registry, and in fact, doesn't exist anywhere at all on the computer. And it's stuck there with a red sphere. Besides that one, I've got about 50 fonts with red spheres - mostly adobe fonts. I know that a lot of those red-circled fonts are in C:\windows\fonts because I can see the files there. Some of the fonts got that way some time ago when I ran MainTyp's "registry fixer".

I just reinstalled MainType to clear up a few Red fonts — that seems to be the only way.

Hi, Mr. Pesala,

I tried installing over the existing copy, but it didn't make any difference.

So I uninstalled the existing copy and re-installed 5.1 without removing my vault and database.
That didn't have any effect either.

I hate to think I have to remove my database to fix it.

Also, is there no way to "clear" the list of "ignored" fonts? Maybe that would help.

Clearing the database is best — then indexed fonts that no longer exist on your drives will be purged.

For me, the uninstall, reinstall, and reindex process only takes 10 minutes on my old hardware with 5,000 fonts. It might take a while longer for the typical avid font collectors who use MainType.

I find this an acceptable solution for now, as long as it only needs doing occasionally.

To stop the red Bullets reappearing, always use MainType to install and uninstall fonts.

Mr. Pesala,

I DO always use MainType to install fonts - that's the point of using MainType as a font "manager", isn't it? ; but InDesign installs some fonts temporarily, and some other programs (including Windows) also install fonts of their own accord. I very often see new fonts in my active fonts list that I never installed.

If I clear my database, then I'll lose all my group assignments and my star-ratings, won't I? That's no fun.

I have the same problem with about 30 fonts. Installing and uninstalling new software MAY cause this problem. Either way, they show under the active group but are neither, active, nor inactive, installed nor uninstalled, loaded nor unloaded. This is a problem for me. I work with hundreds of thousands of fonts, and this occurs regularly, REGULARLY, as in, I ALWAYS have red dots when I don't want red dots. I want them removed, tracked down and removed from my system, or at least ignored by Main Type, any way to get rid of these? And what exactly does the red dot denote? What does it mean? There's obviously a problem, just can't find anywhere that tells me what the problem is. I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling maintype, with/without the database/cache/vault, tried removing them from windows font folder, finding the same font and installing that one. No help. Any help? K

Those fonts are loaded.

If you could explain when this first ocurred and what font names they have, we might understand the cause of this and provide a solution.

To get rid of such loaded fonts a reboot will usually do the trick, but please first let us know the font names and provide any other information that might reveal the cause.