How to Embed Fonts in a Microsoft Word Document

howtogeek.com/106681/how-to-embed-fonts-in-a-microsoft-word-document

by Chris Hoffman on November 2nd, 2017

When you email someone a copy of your Word document or PowerPoint presentation and
they don’t have a font installed, Microsoft Office shows that document with the default font
instead. This can mess up the whole layout and make the document look completely
different, but you can fix this by embedding fonts into your documents.

How This Works

When you enable this option, Office takes the font file from your system and embeds a copy
of it into the Office document. This increases the size of the document, but anyone who
opens the document will be able to see the document with its intended font.

You can only do this in the Windows versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and
Publisher. This doesn’t work in the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, or web versions of Word or
PowerPoint.

This also only works if the font you’re trying to embed allows embedding. The font files on
your system have “embedding permissions” in them. Office respects these permissions, so
you may not be able to embed some fonts, or the resulting document may not be editable
after fonts are embedded. In other word, the recipient may only be able to view and print
the document, not view it. It depends on the fonts you’re using.

How to Embed Fonts

To embed a font, click the “File” menu while working on a document in the Windows
versions of Word, PowerPoint, or Publisher.

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Click the “Options” link at the bottom of the menu that appears.

Click “Save” in the left pane.

Under “Preserve fidelity when sharing this document”, check the “Embed fonts in the file”
option.

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To reduce the resulting document’s file size, be sure to check the “Embed only the
characters used in the document (best for reducing file size)” option. Office will only embed
a font if it’s used in the document. Otherwise, Office will embed other fonts from your
system into the file, even if you haven’t used them.

Leave the “Do not embed common system fonts” option enabled. This will also help reduce
the file size by omitting Windows system fonts that the recipient likely has installed.

Click “OK” to save your changes and save the document normally. The fonts you used in
the document will be embedded into the file.

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Chris Hoffman is a technology writer and all-around computer geek. He's as at home
using the Linux terminal as he is digging into the Windows registry. Connect with him on
Twitter.

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