Thanks for the investigation!
I’m passing this all to those who might be interested in digging further.

NEW DISCOVERY – Follow-up for @Egor Christakov

Hi Egor,

I’ve made a new discovery that may be directly tied to the font menu corruption issue.

While testing various preferences, I found that disabling the following option resolves the problem entirely:

Illustrator > Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard → Uncheck “Automatically Save Recovery Data Every [x] Minutes”

The issue no longer reproduces, even after removing fonts via FontBase or Creative Cloud Desktop.

Additionally, I noticed that after updating to version 29, Illustrator continued saving files to the previous folder: `C:\Users

\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 28 Settings`

Even after adjusting the environment to use the correct Adobe Illustrator 29 Settings folder, the issue persists as long as the recovery data option remains enabled. That is, any font removed from the system still appears in the menu marked as Missing (*).

Conclusion in my test:

Fonts that are deleted while the “Automatically Save Recovery Data Every [x] Minutes” option is disabled are automatically removed from the menu.

Fonts that are deleted while the “Automatically Save Recovery Data Every [x] Minutes” option is enabled remain in the menu, even after the option is turned off.

Let me know if this aligns with any known internal behavior. I’m happy to continue testing or provide more details.

Best regards, Gerson

@Egor Christakov – follow-up on your comment:

Hi Egor,

Thanks for your detailed response — it helped me narrow down the investigation significantly.

I’ve opened all the files located in C:\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2025\Support Files\Required\New Document Profiles\pt_BR\ including Print.ai and Web.ai, and confirmed they are intact. No unexpected artwork or font usage was found in the layers.

I then focused on the folder: `C:\Users

\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 29 Settings`

I renamed this folder and launched Illustrator, forcing it to generate a fresh settings environment. This resolved the font menu issue — the asterisks disappeared. However, this action wiped all my preferences, which I had to manually rebuild.

After restoring my preferences and getting Illustrator back to my customized setup, I tested font deletion again. Unfortunately, the issue reappeared instantly: the deleted font showed up in the menu with an asterisk, contaminating the list once more.

This behavior occurs regardless of how the font is installed or removed — whether via FontBase or the Creative Cloud Desktop app.

Additionally, I’ve confirmed that the issue is not tied to legacy settings from previous versions (e.g., Illustrator 28), nor to corrupted recovery files. The problem seems to stem from how Illustrator reindexes fonts after system-level changes. Even with a clean settings folder, the font menu becomes unstable as soon as a font is removed — suggesting a flaw in how font cache files are regenerated.

Let me know if you'd like me to share specific files or logs. I’m happy to assist further to help pinpoint the root cause.

Best regards, Gerson

It’s possible that this happens because of the altered document profile, which could have happened because of the known recovery problem, when instead of restoring a document after a crash, Ai would open an actual document profile file. If any content got added into it and saved, it could lead to the fonts used in this content to be marked as used... resetting Preferences doesn’t heal it, because these files reset only when Ai get reinstalled or updated to a major build.

Please locate these profiles in folder similar to this one:
C:\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2025\Support Files\Required\New Document Profiles\en_US\
The actual path can differ based on your drive, build version, locale.
Then try to open Print.ai and/or Web.ai and study these. Check if any art exists in Layers.
Please comment back.