How to Extract Fonts

By Kate Moody

Try different fonts to give your text a unique character.
i font image by Pavel Vlasov from Fotolia.com

A wide variety of TrueType and OpenType fonts are already installed in Windows operating systems, but you may wish to try different fonts to give your text a unique character. A wide variety of additional fonts can be downloaded for free from Microsoft and other websites. To be able to install the very large font files you download, first you have to extract them.

Download the font you want you install on your computer and save the downloaded compressed or zipped (.zip) file to your hard drive. Saving the file to a temporary folder or your desktop is a good place.

Right-click on the zipped file and choose "Extract" on Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.

Open the zipped file on older operating systems by double-clicking on it. This will open your extraction wizard or unzipping program that can decompress your file. If you don't have an unzipping program already installed, download and install an extracting program such as WinZip.

Choose a location to save your unzipped file and make sure your file name matches the font's name. Click on "OK" to unzip the file. Once you have extracted or unzipped your file, close the WinZip utility if it hasn't already closed on its own.

Right-click on your extracted font file and click "Install" on Vista and Windows 7. On older operating systems, choose "Start," "Control Panel," "Settings" and then "Fonts." Select "Install New Fonts" from the drop-down menu. In the window that opens, browse through your hard drive to locate your unzipped font file and select it. Click "OK" to install your new font.

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