Child Item

Dropbox changed my font!

Dropbox has stated that it does not alter fonts... I just uploaded a Word document set in Helvetica Neue... I’m now viewing the .doc file on my phone and the font has been replaced with an extremely ugly and heavy sans serif font. I have viewed documents set in Helvetica Neue on my phone in other programs/apps without issue. So tell me what is going on. It looks ugly and my collaborators will see it like this if viewed on iPhone. It should have defaulted to Arial or Helvetica... I don’t even know what this awful font is.

Find more posts tagged with

View

OffTopic

Developer

Accepted answers

All comments

Anastasios

Dropbox didnt change the fonts but if the font you use is very special and cool

then the program (browser or app) that u use to view the files will replace it with the most available font ...

So it would be a good idea to use a "safe" font especially if you want to share it across many devices and lotsa people

Mark

Also, remember that viewing on a mobile uses the mobile viewers and are previews only.

Once you download it back to a device it will be fine and back to the original layout etc.

Supercade

The Dropbox viewer should be defaulting to the closest available font, which would be Helvetica or Arial... makes no sense that it is defaulting to a heavy display font. This is an issue with the Dropbox viewer, not my phone. As I said, my phone displays other documents with this font no issue as Helvetica Neue is now a standard Apple font.

Anastasios

Does that mean that Dropbox doesn't implement CORS for raw requests ?

Jay

We’d like to look into this further, could you please email us and forward a screenshot of both what the doc should look like, and what it previews as in the app?

This would be great so we can forward it to the appropriate team!

Supercade

I’d be happy to, but that link is just a form with no email address or means to attach files.

Mark

You need to follow the prompts and if necessary attach files via ZenDesk later (http://dropbox.zendesk.com), or, by generating and sending a shared link to the file in question.

Karina

Hey @Supercade have you had the chance to subit a request on this?

As @Mark suggested, it might be easy for you to create Dropbox shared links to the screenshots in question, in order for our team to get a visual understanding.

Feel free to write back once you have a ticket ID associated with your submission, so I can locate in on our back-end and we can look into it together. Thanks again, and of course we appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback and thoughts regarding the font style :slight_smile:

[This thread is now closed. If you have a similar or new question, you can ask here.]

codex174

Dropbox itself is not changing your font, what is actually happening is that the mobile Word app or document viewer on iPhone does not have Helvetica Neue installed as a system font, so it is substituting whatever fallback sans serif it finds available. To fix this, either embed the font in the Word document before uploading or switch to Arial which is reliably available across all platforms and devices.

masonbrooks074

This is a really common issue with cross-platform document sharing and Helvetica Neue is actually one of the trickiest fonts to work with because it behaves differently across Apple and non-Apple ecosystems despite being an Apple system font. Embedding fonts directly in your Word document settings before uploading to Dropbox is honestly the most reliable long term fix.

jordankim9819

Totally understand the frustration because font substitution can completely ruin the visual presentation of a carefully designed document especially when collaborators are viewing it and forming first impressions. One solid workaround is saving your Word doc as a PDF before uploading to Dropbox since PDFs embed font information and will display exactly as intended regardless of what fonts are installed on the viewer's device.

masonbrooks074

That's not a Dropbox issue, iOS simply doesn't have Helvetica Neue as a Word-accessible font, so it falls back to a default sans serif. Either embed the font in the .docx before uploading or switch to Arial for consistent rendering across devices.