Microsoft Office is a popular software package that bundles many useful applications that are used by a large number in homes, schools, and offices. Out of all the applications, Microsoft Word is one of the most used Office tools out there. It lets you create various types of word documents. You can type in documents using your favorite fonts or even custom ones. But, what will you do when an error message keeps popping up whenever you open up a particular word document file? That can be super annoying. So, today, we will be taking a look at how to fix ‘there is insufficient memory or disk space, Word cannot display the requested font‘.

Now, there are many reasons why this error might occur. It could be because of corrupted font files, corrupted or missing Microsoft office files, or for that matter, even some issues with the add-ons that might have been installed with Microsoft Word. However, you do not have to worry, as there are a number of fixes that you can follow through to fix this exact issue.

You can read through the number of solutions we have mentioned below and choose the one that suits you the best, or for that matter try them all to see if it fixes up the issue, which I can tell, will actually solve this issue.

Fixes for There is Insufficient Memory or Disk Space, Word Cannot Display the Requested Font

Method

1: Rename Normal.dot File

The Normal.dot file is an MS Office Word template that stores all of your default settings. This can include the default font, font style, font size, etc. Sometimes, there can be an issue with the existing MS Word template, which might cause MS Office to show this error every time you try to open a Word file that has some text in it. Follow these steps to make changes to the template file. For this, you will need to unhide the files and folders on your Windows PC.

1. First of all, be sure to close Microsoft Office Word. It’s important to have the program closed.
2. Now, open up File Explorer on your Windows PC by pressing the Windows and E keys respectively.
3. Next, you need to open up the drive where you have installed Windows.
4. Head over to the Users folder and open it.
5. Over here, you will need to open the folder that has your Windows username.
6. Once you have opened up your user folder, scroll through the folders and open up the folder called AppData.
7. With the AppData folder open, now navigate and open the folder called Roaming.
8. Now, scroll through and open the Microsoft folder, followed by Template.
9. You will now see a file called Normal.dotm
10. All you need to do is to rename this file to Normal.dotm.old
11. Now Restart your Windows PC now.
12. After restarting, go ahead and open the Word document file that was causing cannot display font error.
13. You should be able to open the file without any issues.
14. A New Normal.dot file will be created in the same directory where the older one was created.

Method

2: Rebuild Font Cache

Now, a Font Cache is created automatically by Windows, so that your font files can load up quickly and thus helps reduce any font errors that could occur when you might want to launch any program. Now, just because it is helpful, doesn’t mean that there cannot be any issues with it. Sometimes, there could be problems with the Font Cache files on your system and it would be sensible to simply rebuild them so that you don’t get errors like the ‘Word cannot display the requested fonts’. Here are the steps to rebuild your font cache in Windows.

1. Open up the Run dialog on your Windows PC by pressing the Windows and R keys.
2. Now, type in services.msc and hit the Enter key.
3. The service window should now open up on your desktop.
4. Search for the Windows Font Cache Services and the Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache services.
5. When you find them both, make sure to stop and disable the services by right-clicking and selecting Stop, followed by Disable/Stop.
6. Now, you need to navigate through a bunch of folders to delete a few files.
7. First up, launch File Explorer and head over to the Windows folder.
8. Now head over to ServiceProfiles > LocalService > AppData > Local.
9. You will see a file with the .dat extension. Simply select and delete it.
10. Also, make sure to open the FontCache folder and delete all the contents inside the folder.
11. Once you have deleted the folders and files, go back to the Services window that you opened in the first place.
12. Make sure to select the Windows Font Cache Services and the Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache services and enable/start them.
13. You can restart your PC and then check if MS Word works as expected without any error.

Method

3: Run Powershell Commands

There are two commands that you can run that should help fix the issues you are facing with fonts not being able to be displayed in MS Word. Here are the steps.

1. First off, open the Start menu and type in Powershell.
2. Make sure to run it as an Administrator.
3. With that done, you will now have to enter the following commands.
   • Get-acl C:\Windows\fonts\arial.ttf | Set-Acl -path c:\windows\fonts*.*
4. Hit the enter key after you enter this command.
5. Also, make sure to enter the next command as well.
   • Get-acl C:\Windows\fonts\arial.ttf | Set-Acl -path c:\windows\fonts
6. Now, hit the enter key in order to run the command.
7. Open up the Word file that was giving the error ‘There Is Insufficient Memory Or Disk Space, Word Cannot Display the Requested Font’ issue and see if it displays the same error or is fixed.

Method

4: Edit Registry values

The Windows Registry Editor is a very useful tool that can help solve a lot of issues that you could be facing. Here is how the Registry Editor will help solve the Word cannot display the required font.

1. Open the Run dialog by pressing the Windows and R keys.
2. Now, type in Regedit and hit the enter key.
3. The Registry Editor window should now open up.
4. Now, you need to navigate to the following path in the Registry Editor.
   • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office
5. Under the Office folder that can be seen on the left pane in the Registry Editor, click on the arrow.
6. You will see the version number of the office program that has been installed on your Windows PC.
7. Now, navigate to the folder that says Word and expand it. A folder called Data should be present.
8. Simply select the folder, right-click on it and choose Delete from the context menu.
9. Now, simply go ahead and open up the word file that was throwing up the error.
10. You should no longer see the Font cannot be displayed error.

Method

5: Remove MS Word Add-Ons

Now, add-ons can be super useful as it helps to easily get the particular work done easier and for that matter at times even faster. But you could also be sure that there could be times when a particular add-on might be the cause of the Font cannot be displayed issue in MS Word.

1. Open Microsoft Word on your Windows PC.
2. Now, click on the File tab at the top left corner of the program.
3. Select Options, followed by Add-ins.
4. You will now see a button that says Go. It will be next to the text that says Manage.
5. A list of all add-ons that you have installed for MS Word will now be displayed.
6. To remove them, simply select the add-on and click on the Remove button.
7. Do this for all the add-ons that you think might be causing this error message.
8. Once you have removed them all, you can now open up the Word file and see if there are any issues.
9. If there are none, you have finally fixed the Font cannot be displayed in Word issue.

Method

6: Repair or Reinstall MS Office.

Now, if none of the above solutions actually solved your issue, your best bet is to reinstall or repair the MS Office program. Here is how you can do this.

1. Open the Start menu and search Control Panel.
2. Open it when you see it from the search results.
3. Now, click on Uninstall a Program.
4. You will be shown a list of all the programs that you have installed on your Windows PC.
5. Simply navigate through the list and select MS Office.
6. Right-click on it and choose Uninstall.
7. You will now be shown a window where you can select between uninstall or repair.
8. Choose the option that you prefer. I would recommend choosing repair.
9. Once you have selected Repair, the program will now begin to reinstall itself and fix any of the files that are missing or corrupted.
10. Once Office has been repaired, you should now open up the Word file that was causing the error to be displayed.
11. You should no longer have this issue anymore.

Conclusion

And this is it. A number of ways and methods you can follow to solve the “There is Insufficient memory or Disk Space, Word cannot display the requested font” error message. We hope that at least one of the solutions mentioned above will help you to fix this annoying issue. Also, if for some reason you still cannot rid yourself of the issue the last option would be to perform a factory reset of your Windows PC, but it would be sensible to reset the system by choosing the keep all files and data option. If you have any queries, please feel free to leave them in the comments below.