Microsoft Office for Mac has stopped displaying Unicode Devanagari font conjunct characters (consonant clusters) correctly

T Lubin: Your problem is different than the original post. Please start a new thread, including your operating system and version of Word.

Actually the problem T. Lubin describes is exactly the problem I described my original post. I am using Word 2019 (16.76.1) with Mac OS 12.6.8 (Monterey).

Yes, and I am on Mac OS 11.7.1 using Word for Mac 16.77. The problem affects Outlook too. I have posted this question separately at

Split from this thread.

I have the same problem but with multiple Devanagari fonts, both in Word and in Outlook. They used to work fine, but now conjunct glyphs are all decomposed with the use of virama. This is a major step backward for Microsoft. (BTW, everything still works fine in LibreOffice!)

This is a major step backward in functionality of Microsoft products with Unicode. What is the problem. Can it be fixed?

Not a major step backward but perhaps a step forward.

Do these happen to be PostScript Type 1 fonts? If so, PostScript Type 1 was deprecated by Adobe earlier this year & is no longer supported by Microsoft. Per the Release Notes for the 16.76 Update:

Deprecation of PostScript Type 1 fonts: Support for PostScript Type 1 fonts is ending on the Microsoft 365 apps for macOS.

No, these are Unicode fonts.

Correct, I am speaking of up-to-date Unicode fonts. I can choose other fonts on my system that do work, but if I send the file to someone else who does not have that font installed, Word defaults to a Devanagari font that displays badly. Same with Devanagari in emails sent through Outlook Hence, my problem will only be solved when MS Office can once again handle the most commonly used Indic fonts -- those that are installed on most machines, e.g. Arial Unicode MS! Shouldn't be so hard.

Unicode is not a font type, it's a Text Encoding Standard. Popular font types include OpenType, TrueType, etc, Font type can be identified by the font file extension as well as by using Apple's Font Book application.

The fonts that used to work in MS Office and no longer do are TrueType fonts (ttf, ttc) or OpenType fonts (otf). Others of the same font types do still work. For example Devanagari MN.ttf does not, but Devanagari Sangam MN.ttf does. (Both work fine with non-Microsoft software.) So it seems to be a NEW flaw in the Microsoft products, and it can hardly be called a "step forward."

What I wrote is that perhaps it was a step forward based on the possibility that the issue did involve PostScript fonts. If they aren't PostScript the reply doesn't pertain.

You might try going to the Library folder for your User Account then navigate to:

Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office

then delete the Font Cache folder & restart the Mac.