Libreoffice 5.4 font gui problem, just rectangles, macOS

janoherder · September 18, 2017, 9:47am

Hey everybody,

I got a nagging problem with my LO on macOS. Ever since I updatet my pretty old Libreoffice installation (5.1.) on macOS Sierra, I have a problem with the font rendering on the GUI (see screenshot). I don’t really understand why. Right now I am using 5.4.1.2, but the problem is also there when I use 5.3.5. It is there with or without the german language package I need.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times and also deleted cache and config files using AppCleaner.

Anyone has any ideas what this is about?

Thanks und cheers
Jano

philosophish · February 22, 2018, 11:00am

Hello,

I was facing the same problem, both with 5.4.5 and 6.0.1.

I soon decided it must be a font mapping problem i.e. it must have had to do with the changed system font for 10.10+ etc. so I tried several of the solutions proposed on the web, many of them without effect.

This worked:

Open Applications / Font Book.app
File → Restore Standard Fonts
All non-system/default fonts will be removed and put into ~/Library/Fonts (Removed)
Close and reopen LibreOffice; it should work now
Optionally: reinstall the fonts from the removed folder and check if it still works; if not, rinse and repeat until you have identified the culprit font. In my case, I had another version of Helvetica Neue installed.

Regards

janoherder · March 4, 2018, 1:01pm

Oh my… it worked, thank you so much! Seemed this solved the bug. I restored the standard fonts and then added the the old fonts from the removed folder one by one. Strangely even though I reinstalled all removed fonts the bug is still gone. Whatever, thanks, this worked!

Heiko · April 9, 2018, 9:28am

Thank you very much, this problem has been bugging me for a while on different Macs since a few versions of Libre Office as well as MacOS.
The solution worked perfectly on High Sierra 10.13.4 (German) and Libre Office 5.4.6.2, but I am confident it will work on other versions, too. This problem has been with me for a few versions of both LO and MacOS now.

shimmy · August 10, 2018, 6:59pm

The solution above only works if we don’t need the other fonts. I need my other fonts. Any other solutions?

mikekaganski · August 10, 2018, 10:24pm

The solution above should work in all cases. If you read carefully, it tells to reinstall the removed fonts one by one, checking the results at each step; you may either find (a single) problematic font(s), or even be able to successfully reinstall all fonts (as @janoherder mentioned), which would mean that not fonts, but their registration info was somehow broken, and now correctly restored.

And this is not an answer; your comment should go the comments section.