🦊When Times New Roman Suddenly Vanished from InDesign
Recently at work, I ran into a strange and frustrating issue in Adobe InDesign:
Times New Roman suddenly started appearing as an unsupported font.
This happened completely out of the blue — the same documents had been fine just a few days earlier.
After some trial and error, I came to suspect that this wasn’t an InDesign issue at all, but a Windows-side problem. It seems that a recent Windows Update may have updated the Times New Roman files, and as a result, InDesign was no longer able to recognize the updated version properly.
I even tried writing a script to automate the font replacement, but it didn’t help. Because the font name technically matched, InDesign didn’t treat it as something that could be substituted cleanly.
At this point, the only reliable method is to fix the fonts manually — either by using “Find/Replace Font” in InDesign or by updating the font settings in each paragraph or character style one by one.
A workaround for urgent situations
One workaround did help when I needed a quick fix:
If I had another InDesign project that had been packaged before the issue occurred, the “Document fonts” folder often included older Times New Roman font files.
By copying that folder and placing it in the same directory as the problematic INDD file, InDesign was able to display the fonts correctly again.
It’s not a fundamental solution, and it doesn’t address whatever is happening at the system level, but it’s a surprisingly effective emergency measure when the document needs to open correctly right now.
I hope this note helps anyone facing the same sudden Times New Roman issue.
