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I got a Microsoft Office 2010 Word document, which has a new font embeded. I can use this font in the document, but the font it self doesn't exist in my system.

Is there any possibility to export this font from the file so I can use it in other documents?

2 Answers 2

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Warning! This is a quick and dirty hack that may work, but it is ugly! : )

Fonts often have to be licensed in order to be distributed. You should not do this if you and/or the sender of the document do not have legal rights to distribute the font(s) in question. If you do own the rights to the font(s) then you can try this to install the font into your system. In short, I am not recommending that you break any laws to do this. This is all a theory and you use it at your own risk. I have no idea if this is legal or not, ask your attorney. If you own this font or have a legal right to get at it, you can try this.

I don’t have time right now to convert this process to something easier for you to use, but if you really want to try this, here is what you can do.

Before you continue you should have:

Windows 7 (or MAYBE Windows Vista). If you have Windows XP you may be able to get this to work but you will have to figure out the missing pieces on your own as the instructions are not for XP.

I am assuming you do not have Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or higher installed on your system. If you do, then you should be able to run this code no problem.

If you don’t, you must have the .NET Framework 3.5 or later installed on your system to even try this. That means you must have Windows 7 (which includes it already) or you have to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 on your own (can download here from Microsoft for free if needed http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/cc378097 )

If you have Windows 7 and/or .NET installed, you can try this by going to this guy’s Web site and download his program “TextViewerFind.zip” at the bottom of his page here:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/archive/2008/04/17/converting-fixeddocument-xpsdocument-too-to-flowdocument.aspx

Or you can just download the zip file directly from him here: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/WindowsLiveWriter/ConvertingFixedDocumentXPSDocumenttootoF_128D2/TextViewerFind_1.zip

After you have the Zip file on your system, unzip the file anywhere you want and remember where you put it.

Now, open the Word docx file that has the embedded fonts in it that you want to get out.

Save the Word document as an “XPS Document *.xps” document type and RENAME the Word document from whatever it is currently named to lorem.xps instead. Place it as lorem.xps into this “Resources” folder on your computer that you have from unzipping that file you downloaded:

Drive:\wherever you unzipped to\TextViewerFind_1\TextViewerFind\TextViewerFind\Resources

If it asks you if you want to copy over the existing lorem.xps, say YES.

So you should end up with a new copy of your Word document, saved as an XPS file, renamed to lorem.xps, inside of a path like this:

Drive:\wherever you unzipped to\TextViewerFind_1\TextViewerFind\TextViewerFind\Resources\lorem.xps

Now run the file named TextViewerFind.exe that you unzipped. It is inside of here, double-click it:

Drive:\wherever you unzipped to\TextViewerFind_1\TextViewerFind\TextViewerFind\bin\Debug\TextViewerFind.exe

It should open up a Window with your lorem.xps XPS document in it. If you see your document in the Window, great, it is working!

If you don’t see your document in the Window or you get an error, make sure you saved it as an XPS document type, renamed it to lorem.xps, and placed it in the right “Resources” folder as previously described above. (You have Windows 7 or .NET 3.5 right?)

Close the Window that popped up. While opening this Window, the program also COPIED your font(s) into this folder on your system (if you Have Windows 7 or maybe Vista):

C:\Users\your username\AppData\Roaming\

The important part is you are looking for a file in there, date and time of right now, that has a file extension of “.odttf” on it.

If you see a file in there with that extension, RENAME the file extension from

.odttf

to

.ttf

So you will have a new file named something like blah-60042DDE-3C60.ttf

Double –click on that file and it should open the Font in the Windows Font Viewer. Confirm it is the Font you want to install, that you have legal right to install it, and then click the “Install” button. You should now have the font in your system. You can delete these files now if you want to.

I told you it was a hack and if you are still reading this you must REALLY want that font! : )

Good luck! Let me know if it works.

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  • Thanks, it works :) Not perfect though, but good enough for me!
    – sventevit
    May 31, 2011 at 15:06
  • One problem - I can use only upper case letters in my original document, which means, that the resulting font has only upper case letters and the lower case letters are Courier or something similar...
    – sventevit
    May 31, 2011 at 15:08
  • Anyway - I am working on a web page for my client and a part of the functionality is a module, which can create Word documents (I got the template from him). These documents have to use font, which my client uses. That means, he has to provide me the fonts also if he wants the same document :P I thought that getting the font out of the document is easier, so I asked...
    – sventevit
    May 31, 2011 at 15:13
  • The blog links are down, so that file can't be downloaded from there anybnymore.
    – JSON Brody
    Aug 18, 2021 at 17:57
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There are several types of "embedded" fonts in Word documents, depending on how restrictive they are. Those are the three cases you will mostly find:

  • They are embedded read-only and non-editable, which means you can't edit the file itself using the font, meaning you can only print it.
  • They are embedded read-only, but are temporarily installed in order to edit the document. This is what you're seeing.
  • They are embedded installable, which means the font will be available on your system anyway after opening the document.

If the font is read-only but still editable that means you do not have the right to export it and use it in other documents. This is by design and is used to prevent unauthorized use of copyrighted material (which a font is).

It seems that a lot of time has been put in making sure that this kind of "intellectual property" is preserved and not misused. Obviously the font is encrypted and not stored on your file system so that you can access and copy it.

Whether it's a good choice or not, that's debatable, but the copyright owners of the font obviously don't want you to just re-use it. Fair enough, some fonts come at a relatively high price tag.


There does seem to be an option that involves converting to PostScript and extracting the fonts from a PDF. This is deliberately breaking DRM, which is why I'll just link to another question here.

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