Managing Your Fonts

TECH TIPS - Managing Your Fonts

Fonts are great and fun to work with. But did you know that if you have too many fonts in your Fonts folder, your computer will take longer to boot and it will also become sluggish.

How many fonts is too many?

In Windows 95/98/ME, the number of fonts you are limited to is about 1000 fonts. In Windows 2000/XP, there is no limit to the number of fonts you can have in your Fonts folder.

But – 1000 fonts are probably too many fonts. Your computer will run slower if you maintain that many fonts. Most techies suggest keeping only around 400 fonts – maximum – in your Fonts folder

So how do you get so many fonts on your computer? When you install many software packages, they frequently install their own group of fonts. So if you have a lot of programs installed on your computer – especially graphics programs, you are likely to have a lot of fonts in your Fonts folder.

Check out your Fonts Folder

OK – time to check and see how many fonts you actually have in your Fonts folder. Double Click on My Computer, Local Disk (C) (it may have a slightly different name, but it is the C drive), then double-click on WINDOWS folder (or WINNT). You will see a folder called Fonts. Right-click on this folder and select Properties. Here you will see the number of fonts (files) in that folder. How many do you have?

You can actually view your fonts and print a sample of the fonts in your fonts folder. You need a program to do this – and there are several programs available. I use a freeware program called FontList. This nifty little program will allow you to view and print your fonts and offers some nice customization features (read the Read Me file). Download the program here.
http://www.bitstorm.org/fontlist/

Trim Down Your Fonts Folder
After you view your fonts and print them out, you can then decide which fonts look very similar and remove those fonts from your fonts folder. Do Not Throw Away Any Fonts - you may want to restore them later. Instead, make a new folder in your Windows Folder (Right-Click, select New, then select New Folder) and name it Fonts Unused. Then drag any fonts from the Fonts Folder to the Fonts Unused Folder

Trim down your Fonts Folder and improve the efficiency of your computer.

Want to read more about Font Management? Read this 3-part article.
http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm

Microsoft has a nice help article on font management – go here.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-GB;835820

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