Helvetica Fractions

I've seen posts about this before but my situation has added a new twist.
I was seeing Helvetica Fractions replace helvetica in Safari and Mail headings. Removed it from Library/Fonts/. That fixed Mail and Safari but now all of the MS Office v.X apps crash when starting up. So far I've tried the following:
Put Helvetica Fractions back
Removed and reinstalled MS Office (without TT fonts)
Ran the 10.1.6 Office update
Nothing works and I can't open any client Word docs or any of my Excel spreadsheets. HELP!!
ps What the heck caused the fractions interference in the first place? Everything was fine till yesterday aft
G5 Dual 2 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

has anyone else had
this problem? is there anything else I can do to
solve whats going on.
This problem is extremely common. Various OS X apps confuse Helvetica Fractions for the real Helvetica. If a web page stipulates Helvetica in its code, there is no easy way to make Safari use another font.
The only solution is to deactivate or remove Helvetica Fractions whenever it is not required for some special job.
Helvetica Fractions replaces normal Latin with fractions and thus does not conform to Unicode standards for font encoding -- it (along with Times Phonetic, which causes similar problems), should be kept out of OS X to the maximum extent possible.
For info on garbled text problems in general:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=932561&tstart=0

Similar Messages

Recieving emails all the text is Helvetica Fractions

I am getting a lot of emails coming in that are unreadable because all the text is Helvetica Fractions. My presets are all Arial so I can not understand why this happens. When I check mail from a PC it looks fine, only from my MAC
Please advise.
Thanks

That's a bad font!
Check to see if you have any of the following fonts:
Helvetica Fractions, Times Phonetic and Alien.
and if you do, delete them!

Safari (and Mail) displays Helvetica Plain as fractions

i tried the font book suggestion for finding corrupt fonts. font book crashed and now mail and safari display helvetica plain as fractions.
any ideas? i have trashed safari prefs and re applyed the 10.4.6 combo updater.
i have also logged out and back, repaired permissions run tech tool pro, etc.

pixelsmith,
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
According to Kurt Lang...Helvetica Fractions is a known source of many font issues. Kurt Lang also has an excellent treatise called Font Management in Mac OS X Tiger and Panther.
;~)

I am having trouble getting access to fonts on hard drive. In particular Helvetica Neue Black. It seems that since HelveNeu.dfont is a system font Font Book does not give me the option to activate HelveticaNeuBlack.

We recently started using Font Book instead of Suitcase Fusion for our font management program. We are unable to activate our postscript type 1 font (Helvetica Neue Black) It seems since hel neu is a system dfont that Font Book thinks we already have it activated but HelvNeueBlack is not part of dfont. So even though I have it in my fonts folder the font is grayed out and am unable to activate. I might add that HelveBlack is also a problem. I've read the article by Kurt Lang on Font Management. I followed his directions on how to remove dfonts from system but caused more problems than it solved. I would appreciate a certified way to handle these particular fonts. Do I need to purchase the Open Type fonts to solve problem.

What I did to fix was remove Helv Fractions that cleared up the problem.
It's been quite a while since I've seen that one come up. When you mentioned that some of the type looked like jumbled fractions, that should have jogged my memory. Yes, Helvetica Fractions is long known to be a bad font. Delete it from the hard drive and never reinstall it.
The HelvNeuBlack and HelvBlack fonts you sent are indeed creating conflicts. Here are screen shots of their internal names. HelvBlack first, and HelvNeuBlack second.
In Helvetica Black, the menu name is just Helvetica, which leaves nowhere for the regular Helvetica font to display in your font lists. It also then creates a cross reference between the two fonts. It is also reporting two other different names to the OS for the same font. Helvetica Black, and Helvetica-Black. You can technically get away with doing that, but it's bad practice.
Helvetica Neue Black is the same type of bad naming. The menu name is just Helvetica Neue, which leaves nowhere for the real Helvetica Neue to go in your menu lists. Then they rather oddly threw in Helvetica 95 Black for the full name, as opposed to HelveticaNeue-Black for the other two spots.
Just some really sloppy work here by someone for what I would guess were Type 1 PostScript fonts converted to Mac legacy TrueType. If you don't have the software to fix the names, the only good suggestion is to throw these fonts out and purchase new ones from a vendor who builds fonts correctly. And while they're kind of pricey, that means either Adobe or Linotype.

Problem with type displaying as 'fractions' in gmail and other webpages

can anyone help me... When certain emails (within gmail) come in they are readable as fractions, yes like maths!! Also some sites I've entered are the same?? I'm sure it's something simple within Safari but cann't figure it out!! Many thanks!!!

You probably need to find and get rid of the font Helvetica Fractions. It's not compatible with OS X.

Some text in Safari appears as fractions instead of readable text

On some web pages certain blocks of text appear as numerical fractions. When I go to the same web page in another browser, such as Camino, the text appears as it should. I have tried to change the font in Safari's preferences, but nothing seems to fix it. This seems to be a fairly recent problem happening on all our Macs and it seems to have started since we upgraded to OS X 10.4, or maybe even after one of the recent updates. Any help resolving this annoyance would be appreciated.
Stetson

Thanks All,
actually, these machines are all running Suitcase to manage fonts, so I eliminated Helvetica Fractions from any of the suitcases and it resolved the issue. It's curious the problem only showed up in Safari and not Camaro, but I've learned not to question things once they are working properly!!
Stetson

Copy and paste from Firefox comes out in fractions?

I have my default font set as Arial in Mail but if I copy a url from Firefox it pastes it in as Helvetica Fractions.
Any ideas?
I'm using the latest versions of both Mail and Firefox

I have my default font set as Arial in Mail but if I
copy a url from Firefox it pastes it in as Helvetica
Fractions.
Any ideas?
Get rid of the font Helvetica Fractions from your machine. It's not compatible with OS X Cocoa apps.

How do i get rid of my emails showing up as fractions all the time

Hi, I have two computers and they both continiously receive emails that show up as fractions for the text. It has gotten so bad that I have to forwared the email - then in the next screen i have to convert the text to arial to just read it. Also all email text just decides to covnvert to fractions at ramdom.
I also have this problem for websites.
Needing to help here please.
Cheers
D4309

Hi D4309.
You probably have a troublesome font installed that causes this (e.g. Helvetica Fractions). If that's the case, get rid of it:
Font Management in Mac OS X Tiger and Panther

Warning: Bogus Helvetica Font May Appear in System/Library/Fonts

I received an unreadable email message from a Windows-using friend recently. The text was a jumble of fractions. Things got weirder later that day when I noticed the same font corruption on Amazon.com and a few other sites that evidently use Helvetica. Restarting my computer cleared up the problem, but it recurred. Eventually I discovered a pair of bogus "HelveticaMM" fonts in System/Library/Fonts, which obviously did not belong there. Not only are these fonts not part of OS X's complement of System fonts; in fact, they don't even exist. There has never been a Multiple Master (MM) version of Helvetica. Logging in as Root and tossing these bogus fonts has solved the problem (hopefully for good), but the question remains: How did these fonts get into my System Fonts folder in the first place? It certainly appears that my friend's garbled email message was involved in the corruption of my System fonts, but is this possible? If so, it would be (for me, at least) my first-ever experience in more than 20 years of using Macs with System corruption caused by an outside agent.
Has anyone seen anything like this before? If so, what's your take on the cause? More to the point: How could one prevent something like this from happening again?
Thanks!
20-inch iMac 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Meanwhile, at least I've nuked the offending fonts.
There is nothing "offending" or illegitimate about these fonts. They are installed by OS X 10.4, not by "some application installer." They do not cause the problem of seeing fractions instead of Latin, which has been experienced and solved by hundreds of people before you. That results from a different font, Helvetica Fractions, which is not installed by OS X or by any Apple application.
Your information on OS X and MM fonts is at least 2 years out-of-date. Please read the link you were provided earlier, which is from April 2005:
http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSXFontTB.pdf
From page 9:
"Support for industry standards
Mac OS X delivers industry-leading support for popular font formats.
• Multiple Master. This special type of PostScript font allows variation of one or more font parameters (such as weight) to create a large number of custom styles, also known as instances. Mac OS X can activate already created instances of Multiple Master fonts."

Text in my headers is now in Fractions

A few days ago parts of my email headers and certain email blasts have text replaced with what looks like fractions.
You can view an example from this screenshot link:
http://www.bigthinkingbythehour.com/FractionType.jpg
Any thoughts?
I'm running Panther 10.3.9

jimcourtri,
According to Kurt Lang...Helvetica Fractions is a known source of many font issues. It's really best to delete it from your hard drive and never think about using it again.
;~)

Why am i getting fractions instead of text on some webpages?

i'm getting fractions/mathematical sentences instead of text of some webpages. after reading another post with a similar problem. i did what they said would solve the problem, getting rid of the fonts Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic. that didn't work.
i got rid of those fonts. searched thru my hard drive to make sure there weren't other copies of those fonts on my system, but the fractions still show up on some webpages.
i restarted after trashing the fonts and did a disk permissions repair. anything else i need to do?

tom, i'll email you with a screen shot.
It's helvetica fractions or something similar.
when i went
to the fontfinagler download site, the example of
garbled text was different from what i am
experiencing.
That's irrelevant. The point is that your machine may still think you have helvetica fractions because it is still in the caches. Clean them.
by the way, firefox works fine.
This font substitution problem normally only affects Apple Cocoa apps like Safari, Mail, Address Book, etc.

Certain sites display fractions font...?

Does anyone else have this probelm? For example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page almost all text is unreadable and displays in this fractions looking font... it is so bizzare. The page display fine in firefox.
PowerPC G4, MacBook Pro 17in, iPod Video Mac OS X (10.4.8)

mandagd2003,
The standard advice given in with this display problem is to get rid of the Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic Fonts, if you have them.
;~)

Fractions in To/From lines

Suddenly the To, From, Date, and Subject lines are appearing in Helvetica Fractions. Very weird! I can't seem to find how to get these to display correctly.
Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Disable Helvetica Fractions! And Times Phonetic, if you have it.
-mj
[email protected]

Mail: incoming message text all turned to fractions? What did I do?

Hello,
I'm by no means a power user, but I can take direct instruction well.
My Mail app displays the text of incoming email content as lots of tiny, closely kerned fractions (rather than English).
This came about after I tinkered with some special character settings in a settings panel reached through the GTD app called "Things". There was mention in that application's tutorials of applying special characters to tags. I happily went along in what I thought was a "Things"-specific Character panel - it must have been a system panel. I'm assuming that I inadvertently altered some default language display settings system wide, that affect Mail (and strangely Adobe CS3's Help Application, too).
I went back to "Things" to manually undo whatever I had done, removing a few special characters from the classification of favorites that I had assigned them in that character panel, but to no avail.
Does anyone know of a way to reset language settings that would affect Mail?
I'd go quick to work with any suggestions!
Thank you.

The problem you describe is normally caused by the presence of the font Helvetica Fractions on your machine. It replaces Latin by fractions and is not compatible with OS X. Find it and trash it and your problem should go away.

OS10.6.8 -- i need to remove Helvetica Neue Family from the system...any ideas?

I know deleting this is not the answer. Any other ideas.

Helvetica Neue should be OK but if you see any of these get rid of them:
Fonts known to cause problems:
Helvetica Fractions, Times Phonetic and Alien.
If you have them, delete them!
More useful information here:
http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/garbled_fonts_troubleshooting_guide.html

Helvetica Fractions

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for