Okay, I work on a publication, and we recently got two more computers to work with. Unfortunately, out of all the fonts that we are using, only two are on the new computers. I want to know how to bring the others over to the two new ones. It isn’t quite as simple as that, though. I’ve tried several things, and haven’t succeeded. Here are the details:
The computer with the fonts that I want is running Windows 98. The two relevent programs installed are Microsoft Office 2000 and Adobe Pagemaker 6.5. Both Word and Pagemaker include the fonts I’d like to bring over.
The two computers I want to move the fonts to are running Windows 2000, with Microsoft Office XP and Adobe Pagemaker 6.5 installed.
The obvious way to do it is to go to the Control Panels “Fonts” folder and put them on a disk to bring over. (By the way, we have no internet access with these particular computers at the moment, and will not have it for a few weeks more). One problem: The fonts are not there. “No Problem,” I think… they must be Adobe or Word specific. I’ll just go find them with the “import font” ability. I’ve done that a few times before. Except one problem – they aren’t listed in the Adobe folder that contains fonts, and I’m not sure where the Word font folder is.
At that point, I was more-or-less at a loss. Doing a search for the font name on the C: drive didn’t work (I didn’t expect it to), and the built in Windows help didn’t give me any clues. I tried an internet search, but can’t find any relevent documents. Unfortunately, I have no idea who originally installed Office 2k and Pagemaker on the Win98 machine, and I don’t know where they got the fonts originally.
theres a fonts directory in your windows folder. should be windows\fonts .Just copy those onto a disk and put copy them into the same folder on the new computer then reboot.
The fonts you’re looking for are probably Type 1 fonts. Win98 does not support them natively, so you won’t see them in the Fonts CP. Instead, look on you Start>Programs>Adobe menu for something called Adobe Type Manager. It allows you to use Type 1 fonts on Windows.
Win2k deals with fonts in a completely different way, so you can’t just install ATM on those machines (it’s on your PageMaker install disk, by the way). You’ll need to use the Win2k Fonts CP to install them (see, I told you it was different).
Copy the contents of the psfonts directory over from Win98 to Win2k, then point the Fonts CP at that directory. It should list the fonts there, and allow you to install them.
Lastly, the legal stuff. Fonts are software, and if you don’t have license to install them on the new machines, you are in violation of intellectual property laws. Needless to say, this also applies to PageMaker and any other software you may transfer over. Be sure to read the agreements.
I left out a couple of things. First, use my Win2k info at your own risk. I’m by no means an expert on that OS (though I know a good bit about fonts).
Second, the fonts you have but aren’t sure where they came from probably came from PageMaker. Some versions came with a few fonts. Of course, some versions didn’t. Do you still have the original box or CD folder? It should list what you get, and will mention fonts if any come with it.
Lastly, if the fonts didn’t come from there and you can’t figure out where they did come from, I’d suggest buying a copy of them (or buying new fonts, that can be fun, too). That way, you’ll never have to wonder where they came from.
I just keep looking at your post and thinking of other things to say. Can you tell that I once worked in Font Technical Support for Adobe?
I just wanted to say that in most cases, there are no fonts that are specific to a particular program. Back in the days of DOS, programs had to have their own, since the OS had no way to provide them. Now, the Fonts Control Panel and Adobe Type Manager make them available to all programs that use fonts.
One way to test this would be to check if the fonts you need are available elsewhere. Do you have any other font-using application on these machines?
But there are always exceptions. Some newer Adobe apps install a font folder for their own use, to get past some of the system resource problems having all fonts available everywhere can cause, and to enable the new CoolType features. But don’t worry about this, because PageMaker6.5 doesn’t do this, and doesn’t know anything about CoolType. Just adding this paragraph for completeness.
I have the type manager installed in all three machines – and Pagemaker comes from the same CD, so everything there should be exactly the same. Don’t worry – we have licenses for three copies. As long as I’m on the “legality” portion though, I know that the fonts were obtained legally for the 98 machine. It’s a single publication that we’re doing, so how would legality apply in this case? We’re putting it on multiple machines, but it only goes to one source.
I have a few more questions/comments regarding your info Saltire, (thanks, by the way), but I notice that The West Wing is about to come on, so I’ll hold off on the rest for the moment. But I’m still curious about the legality of moving the fonts – I hadn’t considered that.
I don’t know the specifics of your font EULA. I know that Adobe issued at least two different types: one that limited a particular font purchase to a single computer, and one that allowed you to install a font on up to 5 machines, as long as they were all hooked to the same printer.
Also, as far as ATM, I don’t think it will work on Win2k. But no worries, since Microsoft made that OS able to read Type 1 fonts natively. So, even if you have the fonts in ATM, they may not be working. You’ll still have to install them with the Control Panel.
Do the fonts you can’t find show up in ATM on the original machine? If not, then you can ignore all my advice so far. If they work in applications but don’t show up in the Fonts CP or in ATM, I have no idea what’s up.
The Type Manager does appear to work on 2k, actually. The version we use did not come off of the Pagemaker CD; instead it was on a seperate CD that our Herff Jones rep gave us. It could install the TM on Win95, and there was a second program to install it on NT machines. (98 and 2k in this case).
I forgot to mention that I did look at the Type Manager on the 98 machine because I had the idea of finding them through there and being able to put them on a disk. They weren’t there. I’m also wondering why those fonts are available in Word 2000 as part of the usual pull-down menu of fonts. If they were simply Adobe fonts, wuold they cross over? I’ll check other applications tomorrow, as well as the original Pagemaker manual/information. I’m afraid that we don’t really have money in our budget for new anything, unfortunately. We’re making a 270 page book, and just realized we need about 10 more spreads. Ugh. We have to find that money from somewhere… But new fonts are out.
OK, I have one more idea. The fonts you’re looking for might not exist on your machines at all: They could be printer-resident. In this case, they will be available for use in some applications that understand printer fonts, but only once that app knows that the fonts are on the printer.
Since most PC printers can’t tell the computer anything (no 2-way communication path), you rely on the printer driver on your machine to have that info. So, if two machines have different drivers (or even different versions of the same driver, in some cases), they won’t show the same fonts. You can check the drivers by right-clicking and choosing Properties in the Printers Control Panel.
In the case of Word, the particular document you’re using should have Print Setup aimed at the printer, and it’ll read the fonts from the driver.
In PageMaker, you need to be sure that the Target Printer in Document Setup lists the one with the fonts. If so, the fonts on that printer should show on the Font menu. You also need to be sure, if you’re printing to a PostScript printer (PageMaker’s favorite printer type), that the PPD selected in the Print dialog is the correct one for your printer. That way PageMaker knows to ask the printer to use its resident fonts when the document is printed. If your printer isn’t PostScript, just use the right driver.
By the way, if this is the case, you sometimes see some weirdness because your computer doesn’t have the fonts. When you use them, the screen will show some font that the computer does have installed, but the printer-resident version will be used at print time. If the two fonts have spacing differences, you can end up with some disagreement between the screen and paper versions. You’ll get used to it.
I just can’t stop. I have two more things to mention, which you probably already know.
PageMaker has a font substitution system, which will pop up a message whenever you open a publication that uses fonts that aren’t available on the machine. It will allow you to pick a font that is installed to use in the missing font’s place. You also can choose whether to make the substitution temporary or permanent.
If you can’t work out where the fonts exist but they still work on the original Win98 machine, you could go ahead and make temporary substitutions on the Win2k machines, do some of your layout work there, and keep using the Win98 machine for printing and for finalizing things. This method is decidedly sub-optimal, since it is very unlikely that you’ll find a font to sub with that is close enough to the original not to make weird spacing and line-break problems. But at least you could possibly get through your current pub this way, and solve the problem later. We all do things under a deadline that we’d never do if we had as much time as we needed.
The last thing is to suggest you visit the user forums at Adobe.com. If this problem is related at all to ATM or Type 1 fonts, someone there will be able to solve it. If your problem turns out to be related to TrueType fonts (which Adobe doesn’t manufacture and their fans tend to look down upon), you may not get much help, but they’ll probably at least be able to point you toward some solution.
Can you search C: for *.ttf files? I know that I wasn’t able to find font files by browsing (Windows hid them) but by searching for *.ttf files and copying & pasting I was able to get them off of the machine. The actual font name often doesn’t match the filename.