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After a recent Windows 10 update, emoji became invisible in several apps (Google Chrome, MS Word).

The behavior of MS Word is particularly weird: When I open a DOCX file that contains emoji (set with the font Segoe UI Emoji), they are invisble. After I save it as PDF, emoji become visible also in the DOCX file. But if I then save the DOCX file, close it, and open it again, the emoji are invisible again.

I compared the font seguiemj.ttf to a backup of that file that I happen to have from when emoji were visible. The files are identical, i.e. the font hasn't changed.

Deleting the FontCache folder didn't help.

What should I try to fix this?

root
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2 Answers2

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TL;DR: A font in a different folder with a different file name (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts\google_emoji_font_for_windows.ttf from here) probably was overriding %WINDIR%\Fonts\seguiemj.ttf due to having the same font name (Segoe UI Emoji Regular).

The following solution from https://github.com/perguto/Country-Flag-Emojis-for-Windows/issues/9 helped me (emphasis mine):

Ah sorry, the September 23 update for Windows 10 & 11 seems to have broken the font, making all emojis invisible. To revert to the original Windows emojis, just restore the seguiemj.ttf file (by dragging it to the Windows fonts folder or double-clicking it and pressing "Install") and restart your PC.

This seems to be the relevant update: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/september-26-2023-windows-configuration-update-542780c2-594c-46cb-979d-11116fe164ba#ID0EPBH-button

Microsoft seems to have made rather deep changes to the emoji rendering algorithm (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/colr#colr-version-1-rendering-algorithm) so I have no idea how to fix it, sorry

Before restoring seguiemj.ttf (whic) and rebooting, I deleted google_emoji_font_for_windows.ttf from %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts\. I also had google_emoji_font_for_windows_0.ttf in that folder (maybe I installed google_emoji_font_for_windows.ttf twice) but couldn't delete it. After the problem was solved, I could delete it (and did that just in case).

When going to C:\Windows\Fonts -> Segoe UI Emoji Regular -> right click -> Properties, it said seguiemj.ttf. Maybe google_emoji_font_for_windows.ttf (also named Segoe UI Emoji Regular) in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts\ was overriding that default font.

root
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27gmI-BEjYU The second solution in this video solved my problem, unfortunately I can no longer see the flags.

rafuwu
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  • Welcome to Super User! Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link(s), as the answer can become invalid if the linked page(s) change. – DavidPostill Nov 02 '23 at 07:39
  • Unfortunately, this didn't solve the problem for me. Do you even have the same problem as I do? Because your link doesn't mention that kind of problem. – root Nov 02 '23 at 23:46
  • I'm upvoting because this answer put the country-flag emojis on my radar, and that made me look into https://github.com/perguto/Country-Flag-Emojis-for-Windows again (linked here) while I was looking for alternative 'windows fonts with emoji'. And that link led me to this solution. – root Nov 07 '23 at 12:31