thanks Ken!
I did both but still couldn't find the supposed missing characters...
There are no empty frames anywhere - that was the first thing I checked before I even posted here.
I also went into every text frame to see if there were any characters in there that were relating to this font but there is nothing at all!
I've also looked through all the layers to see if there was anything hiding by mistake but there isn't!
Another possibility is that you have a frame hidden behind another frame!
Did you check master pages?