Copying Fonts

[jogold]

A user has many added fonts to their Fonts folder, all work fine but when I copy them to a usb stick to back them up the file names get truncated and the shortened ones do not work when installed on another computer.
Anyone has any advice here?
Thanks,
Jo

 

[Blues]

What method are you using to copy them over?

 

[jogold]

drag and drop or copy paste. whatever i do the names get shortened.
now I'm thinking that I didn't try via cmd xcopy.

 

[HCHTech]

What file system is the USB stick using? Reformat it to NTFS and try again would be my advice.

 

[Porthos]

I use Fabs. It also backs up fonts and restores them.
Never bothered to see if the name changes thougk.

 

[jogold]

it is ntfs, via the network is the same issue.

 

[MudRock]

I use Fabs. It also backs up fonts and restores them.
Never bothered to see if the name changes thougk.

This. I stopped futzing with font transfers/font packaging long ago. Way too many weird things happen. Even my own font collection. I already pay for Fabs, I'm not going to pay for a font manager/backup tool.

 

[jogold]

i have fabs and will try it tomorrow. thx

 

[Blues]

I haven't needed to use any particular tools in a while but I recall a command line tool that would typically copy data and resolve these types of problems I will try to find the tool.

 

[jogold]

you would be a life saver.
thx

 

[Blues]

I would give Fabs a try only other thing I can come up with is using robocopy but I am not to sure if that will resolve the issues.

 

[jogold]

Will give it a try.

 

[britechguy]

And a note for the future, anyone who is installing a bucketload of fonts should be saving the original font source files somewhere. It's way easier to just install 'em all again, which is easy if you have the source files, than dealing with what Windows does "under the hood" as far as actually having an installed font in place.

 

[jogold]

would that we always be there at the beginning.

 

[Sky-Knight]

How are you copying the files into place on the new system?

Command Prompt? IF so... don't do that!

If you punch c:\windows\fonts into the run line you'll wind up with a file explorer window looking at that folder, but here's the rub... It's NOT THE FILE EXPLORER! It's actually the special font installer. So if you paste files into that, it'll "install" them.

I've used robocopy to pull files from c:\windows\fonts to a thumb drive, and then simply UI copy / pasted them into the GUI folder and had it work. But if I copy the files into the fonts folder directly... bad things happen.

 

[jogold]

Ok I figured out what going wrong.
When I copy a single font to another location it becomes three fonts.
example: the font is called Ada MF and when I copy it to another folder it splits into three fonts called Adabi Adabold and Adamedi.
I don't know why and don't know what to do about it.

 

[mikeroq]

Ok I figured out what going wrong.
When I copy a single font to another location it becomes three fonts.
example: the font is called Ada MF and when I copy it to another folder it splits into three fonts called Adabi Adabold and Adamedi.
I don't know why and don't know what to do about it.

That's cause the font folder groups fonts by font family. In the list it will show what versions are available:


Notice the icon showing multiple or single fonts. If you double click, it will open as a folder and show you the variants:


Copying out the Corbel in the list will paste all the files in your destination. When you do that the files names will be back to their originals.


I would simply copy all the font files from the old, and on the new select all the files and right click and pick Install for all users. Should work fine

 

[jogold]

I did that but they're not grouping together to get the original name but keeping the new names and then word isn't finding the font and the old document isn't loading with the correct fonts.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Old way....Did you right click the new font on the new rig..and select "install"? I've always just copied the old USB thumb drive (or source folder on a server)....to C:\Windows\Fonts..and right clicked and selected "install".

New way...in Win10, search "fonts"..select Font Settings....brings up a window where there's a zipped outlined box to drag fonts into to install.

 

[jogold]

I tried those ways but when I copy it it splits and I can't figure out how to get the fonts over without them splitting. I'm at a loss.