[Solved] Fonts disappear after moving file to new computer

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tsering
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[Solved] Fonts disappear after moving file to new computer

Post by tsering »

HELP PLEASE. I write novels. My old computer got a broken hinge and i had to get someone to retrieve all my files. i was using an older version of Open Office, possibly 4.0. When I downloaded the latest version of Open Office, my FORMATTING WAS LOST and even worse, my Fonts and Wingdings.

I then downloaded Open Office 4.0 thinking I would get back my formatting and fonts. No such luck.

The lost fonts were: Calligraphy, Lucinda Handwriting, and Park Avenue. There were 3 sets of Wingdings (and no Webdings.)

What version of Open Office can I download and get back my fonts, etc.?
Last edited by robleyd on Thu Oct 01, 2020 5:17 am, edited 3 times in total.
Reason: Moved from Writer forum to General Discussion — not a Writer problem; tagged [Solved]
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by RoryOF »

The fonts you list are part of the Operating system (Windows 8?); if they are not installed on it, you need to search the Internet for them, download them, and install them.

OpenOffice should then be able to restore your formatting, provided you have used an .odt format and not Saved the file with the incorrect formatting.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by Zizi64 »

The installer of the LibreOffice contains a lot of free fonts. Maybe you had installed LibreOffice instead of the Apache OO?
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by tsering »

Sorry but this reply doesn't help. The formatting I lost and the fonts I lost were part of the Open Office program I was using. I have never downloaded anything else and don't know how to do it.

Does anyone know what version of Open Office had this?
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by RoryOF »

Without the fonts, the formatting may change; OpenOffice will replace a missing font with as close a fitting font as it can find on the computer.

From where did you install the original OpenOffice? Was it from a magazine or other CD? How did OpenOffice get onto your computer? Was your old computer upgraded from any of Windows 3/95/XP to Windows 8, which you show in your Forum .sig to be your operating system.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by Bill »

tsering wrote:...the fonts I lost were part of the Open Office program I was using.
While you may have used the fonts in OpenOffice documents, the fonts were not installed by OpenOffice and have never been "part of" OpenOffice for the 15 years I've used OpenOffice. This goes back long before OpenOffice 4.0.

The Microsoft Typography site lists Lucida Calligraphy and Lucida Handwriting as fonts supplied with Microsoft Office. Wingdings and Webdings are supplied with Microsoft Windows. Park Avenue font is not listed on the Microsoft Typography site, so it probably came from some other program that was previously installed. You would need to reinstall MS Office to restore the Lucida fonts. Why Windgings and Webdings are missing, I have no idea.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by RoryOF »

I agree with Bill. I have checked back to StarOffice 8 (circa 2005) and found no official version of OpenOffice that supplied these fonts. Those Bill mentions were supplied with MS Office. I have a distant memory of having seen Park Avenue font; it might have been supplied with a version of CorelDraw.

Most of these fonts are available for download on the Internet, a quick search with your favourite search engine should find them.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by RoryOF »

I note you say "old computer" and imply you are on a "new computer"; if you still have access to the hard disk of the old computer (or the old computer itself), the fonts can be brought forward to the new computer. If you would upload a short document to the Forum, we could check what fonts that document required.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by tsering »

My old computer was Windows 7. It had never been updated from when i bought it. I never downloaded anything but Open Office. I had updated that only once. The computer had never been to a tech until I took it to get my old files.

The new computer did show my old files but the fonts were different and it also lost the page formatting which for a novel, is important. I did not like the new fonts. There was no Calligraphy of any sort and no handwriting font. The choice of Wingdings was poor. My novels are sold on Amazon (also Barnes and Nobel online) under my pen name of "Mary Cambron-Collard" which you can put in the search blank to find them. Then you can take a look at one and see why I need these fonts and wingdings.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by Zizi64 »

When you install and then uninstall a MS Office (or other similar) software, the fonts what was installed by the MSO will stay on the computer. They will not be uninstalled. Maybe this is the reason: if you had such fonts what are not part of the Win7, nor Win10, nor OOo, nor AOO, nor LibreOffice.
Someone, sometime installed those fonts on your computer..
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by RoryOF »

Your Windows 7 computer may have come with Microsoft Office installed on it, which could have supplied the fonts in question.

The page formatting may have changed for a number of reasons: the first is the substitution of different fonts - OpenOffice does its best to match the metrics of a missing font, but that often changes formatting. the second is that you may (inadvertently) have installed a version of OpenOffice that uses A4 pages by default, rather than US Letter; that also will change formatting, and you might even have a combination of both.

Systematic use of Styles will rectify any major fault in a few minutes - as an example, I can download a complete unformatted text of War and Peace (half a million words!) and present it in reasonable book layout, chaptered and all, in ten minutes.

You can search for those fonts and download them from various font sites; when they are installed, OpenOffice should find them on its next startup and your formatting should restore to your heart's desire.

If you have access to your old Win 7 computer, the fonts can be transferred to your new computer.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by Bill »

tsering wrote:My old computer was Windows 7. It had never been updated from when i bought it. I never downloaded anything but Open Office. I had updated that only once. The computer had never been to a tech until I took it to get my old files.
This is all irrelevant. Four of the fonts you used are proprietary fonts supplied with Microsoft products. The fonts supplied with OpenOffice are open source, not proprietary. Most computer vendors install extra/trial software on new computers. That's another possible source for the fonts you used. Since you don't know the actual supplier of those fonts, the only practical solution is to copy them from the old computer's hard drive. This should allow you to use the fonts on the new computer and may fix the formatting. However, it won't fix the fonts or the formatting for anyone else who doesn't have those particular fonts installed on their computer.

I posted a reply in a topic in 2014 that I had no problem using the Lucida Handwriting font in Writer 4.1.0. This was on a Dell computer with Windows 8, so Lucida Handwriting probably was installed on that computer by a trial version of MS Office.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by tsering »

Your info has been of some help. I tried installing my Microsoft Office 97 (yes, I still have the CD) and did get some fonts back but not the critical ones. My computer tech says he cannot transfer my fonts from my old computer to my new one - something about them being stored in different locations.

SUGGESTION: Open Office would appeal to authors more if it included the following:
- a nice Calligraphy font (maybe more than one)
- several styles of handwriting fonts (normal, childlike, elegant, showing stress, etc.)
- some crazy fonts like Jokerman
- a wide choice of Wingdings
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by RoryOF »

Your computer tech simply needs to copy all the .ttf files on the old computer to a USB device or other transfer device, and from that storage device install them on the new computer using Windows 10's Font installation (in Control Panel /Fonts, as far as I remember).
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by Bill »

The Park Avenue font may have come from some version of WordPerfect. I found ParkAvenue BT, Regular on a very old (1998-2000) WordPerfect installation CD.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by MrProgrammer »

Hi, and welcome to the forum.
tsering wrote:I write novels. My old computer got a broken hinge and i had to get someone to retrieve all my files. i was using an older version of Open Office, possibly 4.0. When I downloaded the latest version of Open Office, my FORMATTING WAS LOST and even worse, my Fonts and Wingdings.
RoryOF wrote:The fonts you list are part of the Operating system (Windows 8?); if they are not installed on it, you need to search the Internet for them, download them, and install them.
Bill wrote:While you may have used the fonts in OpenOffice documents, the fonts were not installed by OpenOffice and have never been "part of" OpenOffice for the 15 years I've used OpenOffice.
tsering wrote:The new computer did show my old files but the fonts were different and it also lost the page formatting which for a novel, is important.
Let's review some key points:
Fonts are important to you.
• Font usage on a computer is more complicated than you'd realized.
• Some fonts are delivered with OpenOffice.
• Other fonts are delivered with your computer's operating system.
• Some may be delivered with other software on your computer.
• This other software could be something you did not install.
• All these fonts are available to you in Writer.
• A new computer will come with a different set of fonts.
• A new version of OpenOffice could come with a different set of fonts.
• If a font requested in a document is not installed, Writer will substitute another.
• When fonts you've used are not identical between computers, the document appearance will change.
• Some fonts are free to use; some are proprietary and come with software that you have to buy.

If fonts are sufficiently important in your work, then you must take responsibility for managing them. First, learn which of the fonts your requested in your document are not installed by using the TestFonts extension. Then you will need to know how to locate fonts on your computer, how to create backups of them, how to transfer font backups to a new computer, and how to install them on that computer. Using a web search, find assistance with Windows font management on a forum for Microsoft products (not here).

If font management seems too complicated, then you need to adjust your expectations to match your skills. This could include the realization that you need professional help with font management. Or it could be your acceptance of font substitution and that a somewhat different document appearance is to be expected and will be OK. Or it could be that you accept that you will need to ask someone on a Microsoft forum for assistance when the your current computer fails. Note the use of "when"; all computers eventually fail. Realize that sometimes computers fail in such a way that it is not possible to transfer information off the dead machine, thus you will need to ensure you have sources on the internet for any important fonts which need to be installed on a new computer. This is in addition to your resposibility to have backups of important Writer documents on external media for loading on a new computer.
tsering wrote:SUGGESTION: Open Office would appeal to authors more if …
This is a user-to-user forum. We are all users here, just like you. If you want to contact the OpenOffice management team, visit openoffice.apache.org. Or, just use a web search to locate fonts that you want. You will find thousands of free fonts. Install them on your computer and OpenOffice will find them. Use a forum for Microsoft products if you need help installing fonts on Windows.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the subject field. Select the green checkmark icon at the same time.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by tsering »

Whoever posted to copy the .ttf files from my old computer, thank you for the tip. But you say how to put them in Windows 10 but I am Windows 8. Will it work anyway?

My computer tech also said he could not copy my old Open Office program and put it into my new computer. Why not?
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by robleyd »

Web search engines are a wonderful tool; I found this using a search for windows 8 font installation.

Installing Fonts on Windows 8 - Microsoft Community
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

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My computer tech also said he could not copy my old Open Office program and put it into my new computer. Why not?
A copy the files of a PERMANENTLY INSTALLED software will not work on an another PC. Only those softwares can work on an another computer what was developed for portable working. (The AOO and LO has Portable versions: you can install or copy them onto a thumb drive, and then you can launch it on an another Windows PC where you plug it in.)
The permanently installed softwares have important files (and settings) in many different directories (like the Program Files, or Program Files(x86) and the Windows User Profile, System directories, system Registry, and in more other places). There is no way to collect all of them for the transport.

You MUST have the installer file/s/ (and media, for example a CD) of the older software (MSO), and the older software must be compatible with the newer operating system. And you must have a valid licencse - if it is a commercial software (and the MSO it is). Then (maybe) you will able to install the older commercial software ontto the newer computer. And (maybe) it will work on the newer computer.

The oldar versions of the free, open source office softwares are available, but maybe they are not compatible with the newer operating systems. (And (maybe) even those older versions NOT contain the desired fonts.)
Older LibreOffice versions:
https://downloadarchive.documentfoundat ... ffice/old/
Older OpenOffice versions:
https://www.openoffice.org/download/archive.html
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

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tsering wrote:Whoever posted to copy the .ttf files from my old computer, thank you for the tip. But you say how to put them in Windows 10 but I am Windows 8. Will it work anyway?

My computer tech also said he could not copy my old Open Office program and put it into my new computer. Why not?
Yes, installation of the copied fonts on Windows 8 should give you access to those fonts.

Installing a program on a computer uses hooks into the innards of the operating system, which mere copying of the program across to another computer will not provide. The fonts are used by OpenOffice, but supplied by the operating system, so even if a copying of OpenOffice to the Win8 computer was successful, Win8 would not be providing all the fonts OpenOffice wanted to use, unless these had been provided by means other than installation of Win8.
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by Bill »

tsering wrote:Whoever posted to copy the .ttf files from my old computer, thank you for the tip. But you say how to put them in Windows 10 but I am Windows 8. Will it work anyway?
There are other ways to install fonts on Windows without going through the Control Panel. The simplest way is to just double-click the .ttf file on the new computer. Alternatively, you can right-click the .ttf file and select "Install".
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Re: Fonts Disappeared

Post by tsering »

Thanks. I will try to get a tech to copy the .ttf files and transfer them. I'll let you know if it works.
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Re: Fonts disappear after moving file to new computer

Post by Hyperborean »

I also think it is worth considering this - If you are not familiar with any of the computer operations you required to reach the results you want there are ample tutorials around online, and if that is also hard to operate you can find a lot of book material that might be easier for you to absorb; the For Dummies series is the first to come to mind for learning technology through analogue means but of course there is more than likely a lot more floating around

Regarding the fonts themselves; usually they are in a hidden directory in the C: drive - I think on my device it is C:windows\fonts or something - this is similar to %Appdata% which is simply not accessible without submitting the directory entirely into Windows File Explorer. This might be one aspect of the difficulty you are facing.

Keep in mind that it is NOT necessary to keep fonts in the default directory, and that you can store your font files anywhere on your computer if you decide to install some additional ones!
I can't be certain as I use win10 but I assume win8 works in the same manner where-as you double click on a font file from any directory and it will activate a display similar to a text file, demonstrating the full character set for the font and allowing you to either print or install it!

Selecting Install will install the font on your device and you should be able to select it in your word processing software and just about any desktop app that has a font selection available - a restart may be required but I can't remember as I've not installed any new fonts in a little while!

I hope this wasn't too redundant and I hope it helps in the future!
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Re: Fonts disappear after moving file to new computer

Post by John_Ha »

Some other points:

1. Remember that the font displayed in the document's Font selection box is the font the document is calling for at the cursor position. This may not be the font being used to display or print the document because, if you do not have the font being called for installed on your PC, Windows (or other operating system) will silently substitute an alternative, available font without telling you. This will almost certainly cause different line spills and page spills.

2. The Testfonts add-on is invaluable to check which fonts are being called for in a document, and which are missing and have therefore been substituted. Note that some fonts do not have a font file for, say, Italic; and in that case, when Italic is called for, Windows itself applies a slant to the font to simulate Italic.

3. You can check which font is being used to display text by highlighting the text and Format > Character > Font ...

4. Just copy all the fonts in C:\Windows\Fonts on your old PC and put them on your new PC. Drag them into C:\Windows\Fonts.

Showing that a problem has been solved helps others searching so, if your problem is now solved, please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.
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Re: Fonts disappear after moving file to new computer

Post by tsering »

I want to thank all of you who tried to help with my disappearing fonts.

The computer tech at my local library helped me and we did get them back.

Basically he found me a website with each of the fonts I needed, even the Wingdings. I would be willing to pass what we did to anyone who needs it but I don't know how to get the info into this forum.

Anyway, anyone who lives near Poplar Bluff, MO, we have a fantastic library with a computer tech named Evan who is a genius.
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