Traditionally, Microsoft, along with the Windows operating system, provides users with a good set of practical readable fonts. However, for many users this set seems to be insufficient for various reasons. Someone wants to create a mock-up of a postcard or a congratulatory address, and he needs exquisite letters. Someone works with mathematical formulas - professional symbols are required here. Special characters exist even for recording chess etudes! Of course, standard Windows fonts are not able to cover all of these and other cases. Fortunately, you can complete the basic set yourself. As will be seen later, this is not at all a difficult task.
How to choose
Before telling how to install fonts in Windows 7, I would like to give some tips on choosing them.
The computer user should remember that the main requirement for typography is readability. It is not so important how beautiful the individual letters will be, if reading what is written turns into a decoding of the rebus, this will certainly hinder the message that is embedded in the text. Hence the first tip: before installing a new font in the system, look at the samples of written words. The easiest way to do this is by double-clicking on the file.
The next thing you should pay attention to: many fonts for Windows 7 are designed only for writing Latin letters, but most Russian-speaking users can not do without the Cyrillic alphabet. Sometimes an indication of support for the Russian alphabet is contained directly in the name ("rus", "kyr" are marker words), but not always. Exactly double-click preview will help to determine exactly the availability of the native language.
And the last: there are many so-called font collections. This is an archive with dozens or even hundreds of files. It is very unreasonable to install them all without looking - any garbage in the system folders slows down the computer over time. For example, drawing thumbnails of the Fonts folder with a large number of installed fonts can take several minutes. It is also difficult to review each file from the set before installation. Nevertheless, the optimal solution is to download only what is really needed to the computer.
General directions
Font files have, as a rule, the extension .ttf, less commonly .otf or .fnt. But they are often available in archived form (extension .zip, .rar, .7z, etc.) Any of the methods described below assumes that you have already unpacked the archive and extracted fonts from it. Windows 7 can unpack .zip archives. For other types of files you will need a special archiver program.
In addition, installing a new font requires administrative privileges. If you are not a computer administrator and do not know the administrative password, then to complete the installation you will have to contact someone who has such authority.
Installation via the context menu
This is probably the easiest way to install fonts on Windows 7. The operating system recognizes suitable files and adds a special item to their context menu. All that is needed is to right-click on the selected file and select "Install" in the menu that appears. It is done.
If you want to view the font before installation, then double-click on it. In the window that opens, the outline of all the letters will be presented. There, at the top of the window there will be a "Install" button. Like the spelling - click the button.
The described actions are convenient when you need to install one or more fonts. If you plan to install a dozen or more files, then adding each of them one by one is a tedious task. In this case, the following method is suitable.
Copy fonts to the system folder
This option should be recognized as the most universal. The Windows \ Fonts folder has existed in Microsoft's operating systems since time immemorial, so it’s easy to use this method in XP or Windows 8 in the same way as in Windows 7.
You can install fonts by simply transferring the appropriate files to the Fonts folder (or copying them and then pasting them). You can not even copy files, but simply create shortcuts on them.
It should be remembered that the Fonts folder has the attributes “hidden” and “system”. To get into it, you will need to either make the system folders visible through the settings in the Control Panel, or use the file manager, which displays all the objects on the computer regardless of their attributes, unlike Explorer.
Installation through the Control Panel
Recommendations on how to install fonts in Windows 7 will be incomplete if you do not mention a special tool for working with them in the Windows Control Panel . To use it, go to the "Start" menu, there we click the "Control Panel" button. Next, select the "Fonts" item, and if the panel has the "By Categories" view, then first click "Appearance and Personalization", and only then - "Fonts".
The window that opens will be the same Fonts folder that we wrote about above. Therefore, to complete the installation, you should proceed in the same way: drag and drop the files with the mouse, copy and then paste them, or create shortcuts.