Hi I have looked in photoshop forums and even tried to join and it I just thought i would post here and give it a try.

I am using photoshop CS version 8 and in my character palette all the font names are in 1 font where as on my friends character palette all her fonts are in the sample font that they are..

For example arial is in arial, edwardian is in edwardian so she can see what the font looks like.

IM pretty sure she has the same version as me.

Any ideas? I have gone through the preferences and help folders too..

First you shout try to reset the preferences. Instructions how to do that can be found here: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.ef4a07f

or: uninstall Photoshop completely. If you have problems with the uninstall use this MS utility http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Please post the result.

Is this on your MacBook?

IIRC Photoshop uses a non-standard directory for the fonts. You can use a utility called Font Book to manage the fonts on the system and make sure that all fonts are available to all applications. Font Book comes included as standard on OS X and will be in the Applications folder.

This thread at Macosxhints.com seems to show that there is a limit to the number of fonts that Photoshop can have active at any one time, but it is from 2004.