Font weight keeps changing in Powerpoint

Anonymous
2024-02-21T11:01:20+00:00

I have a recurring issue where the font weight keeps changing on Powerpoint slides when switching between slides, or interacting with text.

I am using a Mac, with Ventura 13.0.1 installed. I am using Version 16.73 of Powerpoint.

I am using Work Sans, downloaded an installed as a .ttf from Google Fonts through the Mac Font Book.

My issue in particular is that the text that I set as Work Sans Regular keeps changing to Work Sans Medium, either individual words or whole text boxes of text. Sometimes I find that interacting with the text in any way (such as adding or removing a hard return, selecting text, making a change and undoing) will turn that particular sentence from Regular to Medium. If I paste text into a text box containing only Work Sans Regular, and choose "Keep text only", it also reverts to Work Sans Medium.

I have set up the master pages using either Work Sans Light, Regular or Semibold, never Medium. Yet it reverts back to Medium.

Uninstalling Medium as a weight is not a good option as I frequently have to work across powerpoints as well as many other types of assets where I might need to use Medium.

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | Other | MacOS

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Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 437.8K Reputation points
2024-05-02T18:48:02+00:00

I'm afraid you're under a false impression. Neither of the versions you cited are up to date. The current release of Sonoma is 14.4.1 & version 16.84 is the current build of Office. I can't guarantee that updating will resolve the problem but troubleshooting out of date versions usually is fruitless.

If the problem is only with that one font it may be something about the design of the font... Not all fonts are created equal😉

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-11-05T03:36:08+00:00

    I recently had this problem with another Google Font (Alegreya) using the latest version of PowerPoint on macOS (29 October 2024 – Version 16.90.2 (24102719)).

    I managed to solve the problem by uninstalling the variable-width font file (e.g. Alegreya-VariableFont_wght.ttf) and instead installing the individual font files for each weight and style (e.g. Alegreya-Regular.ttf, Alegreya-Bold.ttf, Alegreya-Italic.ttf etc.)

    Once I restarted PowerPoint after doing this then all the font weights were correct and they didn't randomly change anymore.

    So it looks like it's a bug with PowerPoint not being able to handle variable-width font files.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-26T22:42:09+00:00

    Same issue here with PowerPoint-16.90, macOS-15.0.1 and trying to use the Lexend font (from Google Fonts downloaded as .ttf).

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-05-01T18:37:50+00:00

    Same issue using the font Epilogue. The weight is constantly changing when you click away from the text box. Sometimes the entire box changes, sometimes only some words. It seems to happen when it autosaves, but I could be wrong.

    This is a maddening behavior as it makes building a presentation take longer than necessary. It is incredibly tedious to keep reformatting for no reason.

    Please fix. Never had these issues with Keynote.

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