Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions sent in by our readers.

This week, readers asked questions on how to fix a problem with the system crashing whenever printers are accessed, how to get custom or manually installed fonts to appear in Microsoft Office, and where the wireless monitoring windows went in the system's Wireless Diagnostics utility.

I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Printer access crashes the system.
MacFixIt reader jmackane asks:

When I try to print to my Epson R1800, it crashes my Mac running on OS 10.8.4. Software Update says that everything is up to date.

Answer:
In this case, you might try resetting the print system on your Mac. This will clear your printer's configuration and all print settings to their defaults, so when you set up your printer again it should happen from a clean and stable slate. To do this, right-click the printer list in the Print & Scan system preferences, and choose the option to reset the print system.

Question: Custom fonts not showing up in Microsoft Office
MacFixIt reader Gary asks:

When I installed Microsoft Office for Mac, a subfolder entitled "Microsoft" was created in Library/Fonts, and all the office fonts were copied there. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint could use those fonts as well as the fonts not in the Microsoft subfolder. However, I have downloaded some free fonts (e.g., EnglishTowne.ttf) from the Web and the fonts menu of the Office applications do not show these, even though non-Microsoft applications do.

I tried placing the downloaded fonts into the Microsoft folder, but they still were not available to the Office applications. Can you tell me how I might get the fonts to be usable in Office?

Answer:
Try installing and activating the fonts using the Font Book program, instead of doing so manually. Additionally, try rebuilding the Office Font Cache, instructions for which can be found here.

Also, a good font troubleshooting resource you might consider browsing through is this Web site.

It offers a number of tips and information about font usage in OS X, and how various common programs (including Office) interact with these resources.

Question: Wireless Diagnostics chart missing in OS X 10.8.4

In 10.8.4, the "view" from the Wireless Diagnostics seems to have been deleted. I used to monitor the performance of my network. Is this a bug?

Answer:
If you are looking for the Wi-Fi signal strength charts, then you can open Wi-Fi Diagnostics by holding the Option key and choosing it from the Wi-Fi menu, then press Command-2 to bring up the Utilities window. Here you can click the Wi-Fi Scan and Performance charts to get the view of the connection signal to noise ratios and other details.

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