This notification means that the font that the template designer designed the template with is not installed on your computer.

If you do not plan to use the font that came with the template you should still be able to use the template as it is with your own fonts.

Replacing the missing font with your own font

Text layer that uses missing font.

You will need to find the layer that uses the missing font and change the font to whichever you want.

Text layers that use the missing font is indicated in the Font Family selection of the Character panel with the "[ ]" symbols, e.g [OstrichSans] as shown in the diagram above.

You can simply switch out the font here with one you already installed.

Here, we switched out the font with [Arial Narrow]. Note that the "[ ]" symbols disappear after we switch the font.

If you have the font installed already, but it's of a different Font Weight that the template uses, this error message will still pop up, so do take note of the Font Weight as well.

Locating and Installing the Font Used

When the font determines the look and feel of the template, you may want to install the fonts used by the template designer.

Some of our template artists will have put the links to download the font in the template description of their template's details page as shown:

Links to download font in the template's detail page

You may be able to find them in the help document that comes with your template, such as in this PDF guide:

Links to download the font in the template's PDF help guide

When this message dialog pops up, there can be a few possibilities:

1. Due to the .aep project file being shifted from its original place in the folder, or due to the operating system which the artist worked on differing from yours, your After Effects file is not able to find the rest of the files it needs for the project.

2. The artist has forgotten to include the files needed for the project in the template.

For the first possibility, it’s possible for you to solve it on your own by checking to see if the template comes with the files you need and then relinking the files yourself. Let us show you how to do it:

Checking if the files are in your downloaded template

First of all, click OK after you see the above error msg. The project will continue to load.

You might see something like the following. The multi-color bars shown in the preview indicate that there are missing files that are required by the composition.

Project preview with missing files

Toggle the folders in the Project panel by clicking on the little triangle beside each folder icon. Find all the missing files that are indicated by the Color Bar icon.

Toggling the folders to search for missing files

As you can see, in this particular project, the 3 missing files are “Image 1.jpg“, “Particles.mp4” and “Texture.png“.

Let’s go to our unzipped template folder and try to find them.

Locate the missing files in your unzipped template folder

If you manage to find them, then you can easily “relink” the After Effects project with the files as we will demonstrate below.

Relinking files in an After Effects Project

Now that you’ve found the files, it’s time to have After Effects know where to find them and link them back to the project.

Let’s go back to After Effects, right-click on one of the missing files and choose Replace Footage > File…

Navigate your way to where you found the missing file and select the file that matches the one you’ve right-clicked on.

Select the file that you wish to relink to

Now click on Open. If you haven’t shifted the files around in the template, After Effects will automatically look for the other missing files in the corresponding folder.

When it does, it will show this dialog box:

“2 additional missing items have been found.”

So our most-recently relinked file with these 2 additional missing items add up to a total of 3 missing items found. This number matches the original number as shown in the error message, hence all the files have been successfully relinked.

After relinking the files, the color bars will disappear, replaced by the files you’ve just relinked. Note the icons beside the what-used-to-be-missing files are now replaced with actual file icons.

What a project file with relinked files may look like.

If there are still missing files, go ahead and repeat the steps above until you’ve relinked all the files.

Video Tutorial on Adobe Support

Some of our templates rely on 3rd-party plugins to achieve a certain style and look. These 3rd-party plugins do not come with the After Effects software itself and, most often than not, requires a separate purchase from the plugins' vendors.

The templates that require such plugins are marked with the symbol below on the template's detail page on MotionElements.

Templates requiring 3rd Party Plugins will have this icon on their details page
When you open a template that uses a third-party plugin which you do not own, you will see the word "Missing" next to the effect name. Of course, the visual effect generated by the plugin will not be shown as well.

Example screenshot of a project file with a missing effect

To fully achieve the look that our template artist intended, it is advisable that you purchase the plugins required.
After purchasing and installing the plugins, do remember to close the project file without saving and quit After Effects. When you re-open the software, After Effects will do a scan of the plugins and your project file will load with the plugin as well.

Video Tutorial on Adobe Support