How does word display fonts not installed on my computer?

[Guest]

As a graphic designer I receive many samples of artwork. Sometimes these are
emailed to me in the form of Word documents with some text typed into it.
Obviously, if I do not have the relvant font installed, then word cannot
display the font, so what does it do instead?

Does it choose the nearest named font alphabetically? Does it substitute
randomly?

Also, when I open these documents, I notice that a font name is diplayed in
the font box that does not correspond to the displayed font. Is this the name
of the original font in the document that my customer started out with? You
would think so wouldn't you, but I ask because sometimes I download the named
font and then base my artwork on the resulting character shapes, only to be
told by the customer that it looks nothing like their original document.

What is going on - can anybody help?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?QmlnIERhZnQgQWw=?=,

Yes, Word will automatically substitute fonts when a document contains fonts not
installed on the current machine. This is controlled in
Tools/Options/Compatibility/Font substitution. I thik I read somewhere once what
rules Word uses to choose the substitute font, but I can't recall what they were
(I'm not really a font/printing person).

The above feature will let you stipulate which font you want to use.

The person sending you the file can also choose to EMBED the original font in
the file (Tools/Options/Save). This only works for TrueType fonts, however, and
it will increase file size appreciably.

As a graphic designer I receive many samples of artwork. Sometimes these are
emailed to me in the form of Word documents with some text typed into it.
Obviously, if I do not have the relvant font installed, then word cannot
display the font, so what does it do instead?

Does it choose the nearest named font alphabetically? Does it substitute
randomly?

Also, when I open these documents, I notice that a font name is diplayed in
the font box that does not correspond to the displayed font. Is this the name
of the original font in the document that my customer started out with? You
would think so wouldn't you, but I ask because sometimes I download the named
font and then base my artwork on the resulting character shapes, only to be
told by the customer that it looks nothing like their original document.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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