Missing Icons in Microsoft Word (FA >= 5.7.0)

[SAID-developer]

Describe the problem

I updated my version of FontAwesome last week and now I am missing several icons in the symbol window in Microsoft Word. These icons were there previously and working without any issue. The screenshot shows what I am seeing and recently used icons from the sets that are no longer there. I downloaded the most recent version again and reinstalled and nothing changed. I've also rebooted the computer completely, opened and closed Word and nothing fixes it. This issue is across everyone in my office, not just my computer.

What did you expect?

I expected to see the full icon set as I always have.

What version and implementation are you using?

Version: The issue started with 5.7.0 and is still there with 5.7.1
Microsoft Word Version 1901, Office 365 Business

• [ X] On the Desktop

Reproducible test case

Bug report checklist

• I have filled out as much of the above information as I can
• I have included a test case because my odds go way up that the team can fix this when I do
• I have searched for existing issues and to the best of my knowledge this is not a duplicate

[SAID-developer]

Just a note, I've also tried entering the character code and that doesn't work either. It brings up the wrong character, selecting one from the set that is showing rather the one from the full set that it should show.

[tagliala]

Ok, I'm able to replicate this even on Office 2007.

Apparently, only microsoft products are affected by this issue

I'm using the .otf file 5.7.1

This is what happens when I type unicorn on Word:

Wordpad has the same issue, too

Photoshop and other graphics suite looks fine

[SAID-developer]

Hi, just checking if there are any thoughts about this issue? Thanks!

[tagliala]

I've forgot to assign @robmadole

[robmadole]

@SAID-developer I can confirm that there is an issue as well but as of now do not have a fix for it. We'll keep working on this one.

[SAID-developer]

@robmadole Thank you! I appreciate that. I built out a series of ux documents using the icons and it would be ideal to have a fix as opposed to redoing them.

[tagliala]

I've just checked 5.7.2 and the problem is still there

I think that a proper description of the issue is that ligatures stopped working on 5.7+ on certain applications

[Gehanii]

Tried using v5.8.1 and the issue persists. :(

[loesje001]

I have the same problem since I updated to V5.8.1, also tried V5.8.2 also same problems.
Only when I installed the .ttf V5.6.3 en then the .otf V5.6.3 I got that one working, newer versions are all missing icons.
I hope this will get fixed soon!

[rdhar]

Just to add on to this, I experience the same issue of missing/incorrect glyphs when using the Desktop OTFs. In my case, when I copy-pasted the unicode glyph for Diploma (f5ea), it would actually display Paste (f0ea) instead.

Following on from @loesje001's message, I replaced the Desktop OTFs with Web TTFs instead and that appears to resolve the issue immediately. However, upon saving the document with MS Word's built-in "Export PDF" option, the aforementioned Diploma icon is rendered as white space, despite appearing correctly within Word itself! Curiously, the same is true for the Graduation-cap glyph (f19d) but not for Briefcase (f0b1), which is rendered just fine in MS Word and as a PDF.

Instead of the native "Export PDF" option, I just tried saving it through Adobe Acrobat DC instead since I have that installed as part of Adobe CC. Wouldn't you know it, every single glyph is rendered exactly as intended, just as they appear in MS Word.

It almost seems as if only Unicode prefixed with 'f0' is working as expected while others are unpredictable.
—@rdhar, hot-take

System: Windows 10 Pro, v1903
Office: Microsoft Word 2019, v1905
FA5: Pro, v5.9.0

[tagliala]

@rdhar could you please confirm that 5.6.3 works properly?

[qkflies]

While I don't use the Pro version, I've also been running into this issue as described by rdhar with newer versions of FA. I've been sticking with v5.6.3, which does appear to work as intended.

System: Windows 10 Pro, v1803
Office: Office 365 / Microsoft Word v1905 (Build 11629.20246 Click to Run)

[avinoamsn]

+1 for the Adobe Acrobat workaround

[rdhar]

@rdhar could you please confirm that 5.6.3 works properly?

@tagliala Here are my results with FA5 Pro v5.6.3.

Format	Processor	Status
OTF	Word	Fine
OTF	Word Export PDF	Fine
TTF	Word	Fine
TTF	Word Export PDF	Missing*

*Of my sample doc with only 4 icons, only Briefcase (f0b1) appeared as expected in both MS Word as well as its in-built PDF export. The following characters were missing:

• Graduation-cap (f19d)
• Hand-holding-heart (f4be)
• File with award (f559)

The export via Adobe Acrobat DC remains as a viable workaround throughout. It really seems like the issue is isolated to MS Office. I just tried out LibreOffice's in-built PDF export and that rendered the TTF icons with no problems whatsoever, neither in Writer nor in the PDF.

Hope this helps.

[Gehanii]

I was able to use Desktop Pro 5.10.0-11 (or whatever that versioning is supposed to be) for 1 day in MS Word before glyphs started to no longer render. I was able to continue my work in InDesign ES4 for another 2 days beyond that before that too stopped rendering glyphs. The truly bizarre thing is that my XDF file is still able to access icons that are no longer rendering if I am inserting the character into a field via JavaScript. The characters were copied to the standard clipboard from MS Word & pasted into the XML edit-stream of the XDF file.

I made a composite image from this document with both 5.6.3 & 5.10.0. Maybe some of the differences in the character matching might help? The char code column is the character code value Word displays in its Insert Symbol dialog window when selecting the said character.

I also find it interesting that with >5.6.3, Word displays a secondary box next to the glyphs (as well as at the end of each table row & paragraph.) These are NOT the hidden text characters that Word uses; they still appear if hidden text is displayed.

Another observation is that the Windows 10 font view/installation window shows the "th" ligature in the font-view for 5.6.3 but does not for subsequent (and "broken") versions.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

[samayo]

Same issue. Last year it was working just fine, but I guess someone decided to break it :/

[rdhar]

Same issue. Last year it was working just fine, but I guess someone decided to break it :/

I think it's a bit unfair to describe it as someone deciding to break it. Not least because it makes absolutely no sense for the maintainers to intentionally add regression issues to their product. Additionally, as mentioned just a couple of posts above, viable workarounds currently exist in the form of:

• Using desktop fonts (i.e., .otf) FA <=v5.6.3
• Using web fonts (i.e., ttf) FA latest (← obviously my recommendation to get the most up-to-date icon pack)

[ischang]

Unfortunately, these workarounds aren't working for me -- using Microsoft Word 2019 (version 16.29) on MacOS Sierra. I've tried Desktop FA <=v.5.6.3 (tried using 5.6.3 and using 5.6.0, etc). This is for both FA Brands and FA Regular/Solid. I tried the recent Web FA (latest and older) as well.

For example, from brands, I'm missing some of the Github icons (f09b, f092, etc) and all the LinkedIn ones. From regular FA, I've noticed I'm missing the globe icon, along with envelope.

[Gehanii]

Any further word on this? 5.11 is broken immediately on installation.

[pixeokoen]

I used FontAwesome in Microsoft Word, in Photoshop and in websites. But the Word issues made me switch to a different icon font: https://materialdesignicons.com/ (they also have a very useful Chrome plugin for searching icons)

If it were up to me, I'd use FontAwesome, but I have a very strong feeling they just don't care about this ...

[tagliala]

I'm going to close this since we have fixed it in 5.12.0.

I'm still having issues with ligatures and icons with a dash (eg: user-md) on old Microsoft applications, but please open a new thread with a detailed description of the issue if you still have problems

[JoshuaAlzate]

I am using 5.14.0 and I still encounter this issue. I encounter this whenever I try to export the document into PDF like here.

[tagliala]

@Joshanity17 please use the .otf file on desktop. ttf is optimized for the web

Please also open a new issue, providing all the information we could need to debug: OS, OS version, Word version, PDF export method (integrated? Third-party?)

We have a bug report template

I cannot replicate with the integrated pdf export functionality available on Word 2019 on Windows 10.

Screenshot: