In response to my post about a macro to easily list fonts installed on your computer, I received more than one email asking how to add other fonts to your computer in addition to the windows standards, so I wrote up a quick tutorial for you.

1. Go to a free font website. These websites post fonts made by up-and-coming designers and many of them can be quite good. Some of my favorites include:
http://www.fontempire.com/
http://www.1001fonts.com/index.html
http://www.getfreefonts.info/
http://www.fontstock.net/
http://www.searchfreefonts.com/fonts/p37.htm
http://www.abstractfonts.com/
http://www.fontmaniac.com/
http://www.dafont.com/
http://www.downloadfreefonts.com/
http://www.urbanfonts.com/

2. Click on the “download” button beside a font that you like and save the zip file to your desktop.

3. Once downloaded, open the zip file with winzip (or another archive unpacking program) and save the files to your desktop too.

4. Find the file with the file extension ending in TTF. This stands for true type font, the most popular type (and the only one I know how to install). Right-click on the file and “cut.”

5. Using your folder explorer go to your hard drive (usually C:) and find the folder called “WINDOWS.” Double click to open the folder and look for a file called fonts. If you get a message the first time you try to open the windows folder warning you that changing the contents of this folder could damage your operating system or something like that just click “continue anyways.” You won’t be doing anything damaging to the system.

6. Right click on the folder labelled “fonts” and go down to “paste.” Once you have pasted the TTF file on the fonts folder a little window will come up telling you it is installing the font, then it pops away after a second.

7. Open your program and make sure your new font is included in the drop-down menu.

If this doesn’t work for you or if you have any questions, fee free to contact me!

EDIT: PLEASE NOTE – for some reason, on some computers, if you extract the zip file right into the fonts folder the fonts won’t install automatically, which is why I advise unzipping to the desktop and then cutting & pasting the file into the fonts folder.