Open a drawing that came in from another firm and there is a decent chance AutoCAD greets you with this:
One or more SHX files are missing. What do you want to do?
Click through it and the drawing opens with text that is gone, turned into question marks, or drawn in a typeface nobody chose. The dialog is no help at all, because it never mentions the one thing that matters: SHX fonts and TrueType fonts live in completely different places, and a font in the wrong place is a font AutoCAD cannot see.
Ten minutes, one restart, and the same steps work in AutoCAD LT.
Step 1: Which kind of font is missing?
AutoCAD draws text two ways, and they come from two different worlds.
SHX is Autodesk's own compiled shape format. Files like romans.shx, simplex.shx, hztxt.shx or gbcbig.shx exist for AutoCAD and its verticals and for nothing else. TrueType is the ordinary kind, the same .ttf files Word and Chrome use.
If you are not sure which one you are dealing with, the symptoms tell you:
- The warning dialog appeared and listed file names ending in
.shx. That is SHX, and the dialog has already handed you the exact name you need to go find. - No warning, but some text is invisible or blank. Run the
STYLEcommand and walk through the text styles. Missing fonts are flagged with an exclamation mark next to the font name. Arial, SimSun, Roboto or Microsoft YaHei means TrueType. txt, simplex, romans or hztxt means SHX.
Step 2: Installing a TrueType font
This is the easy case, because AutoCAD shares the Windows font pool. On Windows:
- Copy the .ttf file to a folder you can right-click inside.
- Right-click the file and choose Install for all users. In Windows 11 that entry hides under "Show more options". If you are not an administrator, the plain Install entry still works and puts the font in
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fontsfor your account only. Fine for your own machine, not fine if you assumed every user on the PC would see it. - Dragging the file straight into
C:\Windows\Fontsdoes the same job and needs admin rights. - Restart AutoCAD. Not strictly required every time, but the font list is built at startup, so it saves you a round of doubt.
One gotcha that eats a surprising amount of time: Windows will happily install an OpenType font, and AutoCAD will then refuse to list it. OpenType files that carry PostScript outlines are not supported in AutoCAD at all, which covers a good share of the .otf files floating around font sites. Check the extension first. If it is .otf, hunt down a .ttf of the same typeface instead of fighting it.
Step 3: Installing an SHX font
This is the part people get wrong, so it is worth saying plainly.
AutoCAD does not look for SHX files in C:\Windows\Fonts. Copying one there does nothing at all. No error, no warning, the font simply never appears in the list.
An SHX file has to sit in a folder that AutoCAD searches when it starts. Out of the box that means the Fonts folder inside the program directory and your own per-user Support folder, plus anything you add yourself under OPTIONS > Files > Support File Search Path.
The quick way, if you only want today's drawing open: drop the .shx into C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 20xx\Fonts and restart AutoCAD. It works. You will need administrator rights to write inside Program Files, and you will do the whole thing again at your next upgrade, because AutoCAD 2026 does not read the font folder from AutoCAD 2024.
The way I would do it instead: make one folder, something like D:\CAD\Fonts, and put every SHX file you have ever collected into it. Then add that folder to the Support File Search Path and push it near the top of the list. Two things happen. Every drawing finds the fonts, and nothing breaks when Autodesk ships the next release, because the search path belongs to your profile rather than to the program folder.
Check it worked before you celebrate:
- Type
STYLE, open a text style, and look at the Font Name dropdown. Your font should be in there, with no exclamation mark beside it. - Close and reopen the drawing. The warning should be gone.
Chinese drawings and the Big Font setting
If the drawings come from a Chinese design office, you will meet hztxt.shx and gbcbig.shx soon enough. Simplified Chinese drawings usually pair an SHX font with a Big Font, and the STYLE dialog grows a second dropdown that only appears when "Use Big Font" is ticked.
So if the font is installed and the characters are still wrong, check both dropdowns, not just the first one. Missing text in a Traditional Chinese drawing normally calls for bigfont.shx or chineset.shx, while Simplified Chinese usually wants gbcbig.shx.
And if you cannot get the font at all, you can set FONTALT to simplex.shx as a stopgap. Keep the extension in the value, because a font name without it fails silently, exactly like everything else in this article. All missing text then draws in plain Latin characters, which at least tells you how much of it you are missing. Chinese characters will still come through as question marks, so treat this as a way to read a drawing rather than a way to finish one.
The other buttons in the missing-font dialog
Specify a replacement for each SHX file maps each missing font to one you already have, for this session only. Nothing is written into the drawing, so it is a safe way to read a file you will never edit. Autodesk's own support notes point out that the missing font still shows a warning symbol in the STYLE dialog afterwards, which is normal and does not need fixing twice.
Ignore the missing files and continue is the button to be careful with, especially with the "always perform my current choice" box ticked. Choose that combination once and AutoCAD stops asking. The next drawing with missing fonts will just open with text quietly absent, and you will spend an hour blaming the file instead of the dialog.
When it still does not show up
Two more cases that the checklist does not cover. If a font sits in the right folder and AutoCAD still cannot read it, the copy itself may be damaged, so grab a fresh one. And if the whole font list looks wrong, with fonts you know you have reporting as missing, the profile is usually to blame, and resetting AutoCAD to its defaults sorts it out.
Where to get the fonts in the first place
Standard SHX fonts ship with every AutoCAD installation, so if a common one like simplex.shx is missing from yours, the fastest source is any working machine in the office. It is the same file.
If it is a custom font from a client or a supplier, ask them for it. SHX files normally travel with the drawing pack, and asking is quicker than hunting. Better still, ask for an ETRANSMIT of the drawing, which bundles the fonts inside the file. That also happens to be a good habit for sending your own drawings out.
For commercial TrueType typefaces, buy a licence for the number of seats you need. Renamed copies found on download sites are frequently a different font altogether, and a font you cannot trust is a font that costs you a day of redrawing.
Do the setup once
The whole mess comes from AutoCAD treating SHX as its own private library instead of borrowing from Windows. Accept that, give it one folder you control, and the problem stops coming back. Mine has been sitting in the same place for years and has followed me through every release since, which is more than I can say for anything else in the program.
If a font is still refusing to show up, paste the exact filename from the warning dialog and tell me where you put it, and I will take a look.