When you use a unique font that is not a standard Windows or Office font, you risk suffering with the possible effects of font substitution occurring when your file is opened on another computer.  When font substitution takes place, the look of your document can change considerably.  Parts of the text can become misaligned, text wrapping points may change, and special characters can turn into meaningless rectangles.  To prevent font substitution from happening, you can choose to embed the fonts to make sure the document looks the same on other systems.  As a result, you minimize the risk of the fonts, layout, and styling of the document changing.   Without using the embed feature, you may feel your only choice is to rely on sharing your file in only in pdf format because pdfs allow you lock down the look of the document.   But pdfs suffer from the disadvantage of not allowing full editing rights.

How do I embed a font in Word?

1. Click on File tab and then select Options.
2. Select the Save category on the left hand side.
3. At the very bottom of the list of options and under the heading Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation, check the box labeled Embed fonts in the file. 

   

4.  Then click OK.

Are all fonts embeddable in Word?

No, please be aware of 2 very important features of a font that can limit your ability to embed it.

1. The font should be a TrueType (.TTF). Many Postscript/Type 1 and OpenType fonts do not support embedding.
2. Your licensing of the font must allow it to be embedded.

Font designers often will restrict the ability of a font to be embedded. This prevents unlicensed use of the font.  Generally, if the font is purchased at a higher price point, the ability to have Word embeddability is unlocked.

Fonts can be purchased with 1 of 4 levels of embeddability:

• Non-embeddable
• Preview/Print
• Editable
• Installable

The levels of Editable and Installable allow the font characters to be embedded in Word and PowerPoint.

To check what rights you have to a font: go to Control Panel in Windows and click Fonts. Clicking on the font shows the Font embeddability.

In the picture above, the Mickey Ears Regular font is listed as Installable   Therefore, this font can be embedded in Word.

For more information, check out Microsoft’s Font Redistribution FAQ document.

How do I check if embedding the font truly worked?

Unfortunately, looking at the font named in the Font box on the Home tab will not help you know if the embedding worked.   The Font box will always say the name of the font used when designing the document even if the system has no access to such a font.

To check for font substitution, you need to find and use on the Font Substitution button which is found by these steps:

1. Open the file on a system that does not have the unique font installed.
2. Click on File tab and then select Options.
3. Select the Advanced category on the left hand side and scroll down to the Show document content section.  Click on the Font Substitution button.

   

4. If you get the message, that “No font substitution is necessary”, then the embedding worked.

If I do not have rights to embed, how can I control the font substitution that occurs when I open my document on another computer where my custom font is not installed?

1. Open the file on the system that does not have the unique font installed.
2. Click on File tab and then select Options.
3. Select the Advanced category on the left hand side and scroll down to the Show document content section.  Click on the Font Substitution button.
4. In the Font Substitution window, work one at a time with each font listed in the Missing document font column.   Select the desired appropriate font in the Substituted font column.

   

Please be aware that these settings for font substitution choices are unique to that particular installation of Word. The choices made here do not travel with the document.

How can I permanently convert a font to one that is commonly installed?

Use the steps above to get to the Font Substitution window.  Then for each unique font listed in the Missing document font column, find a desired Substituted font in the drop down of the adjoining column.  Then click on Convert Permanently button in the lower left corner when you feel that particular font should be permanently replaced with another one.

Where can I find a list of Common fonts that would be available on most computers?

Common fonts are those that are generally installed with either the Operating System or with the install of Microsoft Office.

This resource pages at Indezine.com  and another from ampsoft.net list the fonts installed with the various versions of Microsoft Office.  If you utilize fonts that are predominantly used across the various versions of Office, you can be relatively sure that your document will not suffer any unintended consequences of font substitution taking place on other computers.

Does embedding in PowerPoint work the same way?

No, there are some significant differences.  Please read my other post on PowerPoint font embedding FAQs to discover how there are less direct tools to figure out Font Substitution in PowerPoint

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