How to define a fallback for fonts that don't exist or have a different name?

Question

When we moved from an old Windows machine to a new one, some of the installed fonts were upgraded to a new version with a slightly different name. Because of this, Word (and other programs) can't find the correct font when opening documents which were created on the old machine, even though the font is still there, but with a different name. This causes all documents created on the old machine to break.

How can I tell Windows that any program which asks for e.g. "My Old Font" should automatically use "My New Font" instead?

Answer 1

According to Microsoft, this is called font substitution. Normally it should happen automatically if the program uses PANOSE information. But in case it doesn't, you can configure it in the registry:

Windows font substitution is set with the registry entries under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes. The registry entry of “Helvetica” with the value of “Arial”, for instance, indicates to substitute Helvetica font with Arial font; and the registry entry of “Arial,0” with the value of “Arial,161” will substitute Arial with ANSI_CHAERSET to Arial with GREEK_CHARSET.