I’ve been experiencing an issue with Scrivener on my Windows 10 system. The text in the program’s menus displays strange characters, seemingly at random. I’ve attached a screenshot to illustrate the problem.
This issue is present even after changing the language settings, reinstalling the program, and manually clearing out Scrivener-related entries in the Windows registry. I noticed a comment on Reddit suggesting that this could be a font-related problem, but I haven’t been able to identify or remove any conflicting fonts on my system. The default font used by Scrivener’s menu, Calibri, is protected in Windows and can’t be removed.
I would appreciate any help or advice to resolve this issue. Thank you.
I’ve seen a couple of help tickets from Windows users with this issue in the past.
On those tickets, we determined that this error seems to be related to users having a local installation of the Segoe UI fonts on their computers. While that font is the system UI font, the local installation seems to be the root of the issue.
In those other tickets, removing the local copy of Segoe fonts corrected the problem. This might require using the registry editor, since the system connection to the Segoe fonts might prevent simply deleting the local copy.
Subject: Re: Weird characters in menu options - Solved
Dear RuthS,
I wanted to express my sincere thanks for your help. Your suggestion about the local installation of Segoe UI fonts was indeed the root cause of the problem. I’m grateful for your assistance.
For the benefit of anyone else who might encounter this issue, I followed these steps to resolve the problem:
Opened the Registry Editor by pressing “Windows + R”, typing “regedit”, and hitting Enter.
Navigated to the location of the fonts in the registry, which is usually found under “Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts”.
Searched for entries mentioning “Segoe UI”, which might have names like “Segoe UI (TrueType)” or similar.
Right-clicked on each entry and selected “Delete”.
After deleting the entries, I restarted my computer.
In addition to these steps, it may be necessary to delete the physical copies of the Segoe UI fonts from the “Fonts” folder in the “Windows” directory, typically found under “C:\Windows\Fonts”.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Modifying your system’s registry can be risky. If you are uncomfortable doing this on your own, please consult with an expert or seek professional help.
Thank you again for your assistance, RuthS. I hope this information might be useful to others experiencing the same issue.
I second your recommendation that users who aren’t comfortable with editing the registry reach out for additional support. My tech-support colleagues and I are always happy to assist.
