Housecleaning... and how to keep it clean?

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Jonathan Sachs - 17 Apr 2005 15:13 GMT

I just looked at my Windows XP system's list of fonts, and I'm
astonished (well, discouraged anyway) by the amount of junk in it.
Arnprior, Blue Highway, Carbon Block, Credit Valley, Earwig Factory,
Neuropol, Raavi, Teen... I have never heard of most of these, much
less wanted them.

Presumably most of these were installed automatically with various
applications. I'd like to clean them out, but without knowing what
applications installed them and why, I can't do so safely. Any one of
them could be absolutely essential to some program that I use once a
year and otherwise never think about.

Is there any way to track this stuff down so that I can tell whether
any given font is safe to delete?

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 17 Apr 2005 17:18 GMT

You could start with
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/DeleteFontsSafely.htm. Instead of
actually deleting fonts, though (especially given that you don't know their
source, and against the chance that someday you might want one or another of
them), just move them to an Available Fonts folder. This makes it simple to
reinstall one when you need it.

Signature

Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

> I just looked at my Windows XP system's list of fonts, and I'm
> astonished (well, discouraged anyway) by the amount of junk in it.
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>
> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

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Jonathan Sachs - 17 Apr 2005 18:26 GMT

>Instead of
>actually deleting fonts, though (especially given that you don't know their
>source, and against the chance that someday you might want one or another of
>them), just move them to an Available Fonts folder. This makes it simple to
>reinstall one when you need it.

Yes, that seems like a logical (and obvious) precaution, but it really
doesn't address the problem. Suppose I remove a bunch of fonts, and
five months from now some program up and says something like "ERR 2295
REQUIRED FONT MISSING"? Unless I can identify the font it wants, I
will have to reinstall all of them, or else reinstall the program
itself and hope _that_ works.

Suppose the program gives a totally cryptic or misleading message, or
just blows up? Unless I have superhuman powers of deduction, I
probably won't even think of the fonts as a possible cause.

Call me overly cautious, but I've had extremely paintful and difficult
problems that were caused by measures no more apparently dangerous
than this.

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 17 Apr 2005 18:39 GMT

This is unlikely to happen provided you keep the fonts listed in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/DeleteFontsSafely.htm. And I can't
speak to any but Office programs, but I can tell you that Word will function
quite happily without a given font installed. It will show the font name in
the font box but will use a substitute font for display/printing. Since the
font name is displayed, you can reinstall it if necessary. Similarly,
Publisher will give you a dialog telling you exactly what fonts are missing.

If you really want to do some research, you can use the font Properties to
determine the source of each font before uninstalling it. But you can be
pretty sure that fonts with weird names such as those you mentioned will
probably not be *required* by any program (except perhaps in the sense that
a program may provide templates that use them).

Signature

> >Instead of
> >actually deleting fonts, though (especially given that you don't know their
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

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Stan Brown - 17 Apr 2005 18:37 GMT

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in microsoft.public.word.printingfonts:

>You could start with
>http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/DeleteFontsSafely.htm. Instead of
>actually deleting fonts, though (especially given that you don't know their
>source, and against the chance that someday you might want one or another of
>them), just move them to an Available Fonts folder. This makes it simple to
>reinstall one when you need it.

I have an Uninstalled subdirectory under my Fonts directory. I'm
99% sure I never created it, but it seemed like a good place to
stash unwanted fonts.

Signature

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 17 Apr 2005 21:07 GMT

Agreed.

Signature

> "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in microsoft.public.word.printingfonts:
> >You could start with
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> 99% sure I never created it, but it seemed like a good place to
> stash unwanted fonts.

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Rob Giordano \(Crash Gordon®\) - 30 Apr 2005 16:04 GMT

Is *that* what the UI folder under Fonts is in W98se ??

I can just move fonts from Fonts to UI?

I've been told that I might have too many fonts installed (657 to be exact) and is causing problems with Acrobat creating pdf, and Publisher too.

Thanks for input,

Rob

> Agreed.
>
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> > 99% sure I never created it, but it seemed like a good place to
> > stash unwanted fonts.

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