Fonts Not Showing Up in Adobe Illustrator? Here’s the Fix

Of all the ridiculous problems I've run into with computers over the years, I've never had a problem with fonts until this afternoon. After installing a new font for a project, I was able to see it listed as a choice in Adobe Illustrator, but no matter which method I used to select the new font, it wouldn't work. The text would default to whatever I had it set at previously. Restarting the computer and re-installing the font didn't help. I've never run into problems after installing fonts, and while I can't intelligently explain the quirk, there is a simple fix.

Did you know your computer has a font cache? I didn't either. The key to solving this problem is to clear this mysterious font cache, which is pretty simple, and the setting only has to be changed once.

Navigate to: Control Panel > Administrative Tools and double click Services. In the new window, ignore any Active X warnings and click on the standard tab. From there, scroll down to Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache, right click and select properties. Select "Disable" in the startup type dropdown box, hit ok and exit. Restart your computer.

You can now get back into Illustrator and the font will magically work. Ah, computers.