Adding Fonts to Windows

For Julie M. (In response to the Stupid Question of the Day)…

While Microsoft Windows and Office come with a hefty amount of fonts preloaded, there are always those occasions where you can’t find just the right font for your project. There are literally thousands of free fonts out there that you can install- and it’s really not all that difficult.

A Word of Caution: when applications start, they must load the list of fonts upon startup. So if you have thousands of fonts installed, it may start affecting the startup times of applications that use fonts. With that, there are two basic ways to use a font- and I’ll cover both here.

Here are some sites I use to download free fonts…

Urban Fonts
This is my new favorite with over 8,000 fonts- and it lets you type in your own text to see a preview of that text written in the fonts!

1001 Free Fonts
Another great choice with a wide variety and a custom preview!

Simply the Best Fonts
Another great choice- easy to browse!

Type Now
Although the site has commercial fonts thrown in, just use the drop-down menu in the upper right of the page to navigate to the free fonts of your choice!

Font Stock

2200 Free Fonts
What more is there to say?

And there are more and more and more. You’ll find overlap in most of these, so there’s no sense going on and on. Some sites allow you to download all the fonts in one zip file. Almost all the sites deliver the font to you in a zip file. If you don’t know what to do with the zip file, click here.

2 Ways to use Downloaded Fonts

Temporary Use
If you are just going to use the font for a specific project and chances are low that you will use the font frequently, don’t install it- you don’t have to! Here’s what I do- I create a folder in my Documents folder titled “Fun Fonts.” And that’s where I store the fonts I don’t use often.

When you want to use the font, just double-click on the font’s icon. When you do this, the font’s preview window opens.

Now, minimize the preview window to get it out of your way. Any application you start after opening the preview window will allow you to use that font! Remember, if you already have an application open when you do this, you must restart that application!

Installing for Permanent Use
There are some fonts that you run across that you will use over and over multiple times in multiple applications. To make these available, you must “install” the font. This means nothing more than moving the font file to the Fonts folder! It’s that easy!

Open your fonts folder:
Start — Control Panel — Fonts (Classic View) OR
Start — Control Panel — Appearance and Personalization — Fonts (Category View)

Once the font folder is open, just drag your font file and drop it in there! That’s it!