Plugin for MS Office

A place for requests and discussion of new FontExpert features
Post Reply
font_user
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:00 am

Plugin for MS Office

Post by font_user »

My question is about a functionality (or lack thereof), for which I have found no solution by now - neither through Windows functions nor external software. And I searched for quite a time.

Problem
With a standard install of Windows, (MS) Office and a few other applications, the Font folder (and the font list in Office applications) quickly gets bloated with several hundred (or even more) Fonts. Using a Font Manager like FontExpert is already expression of Windows' lack of suitable managing capabilities for fonts. The problem here is everyday handling, as the list of Fonts that are actually required in day-to-day standard use of Word, Excel or PowerPoint is often rather short. Having to scroll past two- or three-hundred Fonts (or look it up within this long list every time) to the one you need is not really good usability.
In order to keep things clear, it would be good to remove all unused and unwanted Fonts from the list.
De-installing all unwanted Fonts would be the obvious solution, but unfortunately this often leads to unforseeable strange and annoying behaviour by applications when they lack a necessary Font. There is no way to determine which Fonts are essential for the use and regular functioning of applications (i.e. giving a warning or blocking uninstall) - including MS Office - and thus a try-and-error approach is not really feasible when you have to sift through said several hundred fonts this way and check several applications every time you change one single font.

The "recently used" feature in MS Office mitigates the problem a bit, but you need to use a Font for it to work and it resets once you close the application.

Now Windows offers the handy setting of "hiding" a Font. This will keep it on the system (i.e. available), but - in theory - mask it from displaying within the "available Fonts" list in applications lilke Word, PowerPoint or Excel.

When hiding fonts, all MS Office applications stubbornly ignore this Windows setting though - making the feature quite useless (Office applications from at least one competitor do not have this problem BTW as they use the API properly). I searched for this topic and made sure that "hide Fonts based on regional settings" is ticked. However, it does not make any difference for MS Office. I tried this on several machines (Win 8.1 Home with Office 2013, Win 10 Pro with Office 2016) - always with the same result. so as a bottomline, this feature is not suitable to reduce the number of visible fonts, as MS Office does not seem to use the standard Windows API for displaying fonts in its applications.

FontExpert
FE has been offering groups for a long time, where you can activate and deactivate (or de-/ install) a group of fonts through FE. This does not solve the problem though, quite to contrary - the fonts are added to the already long list of installed fonts, bloating it even more. Of course you can deactivate the group comfortably from FE, but during their use the list of fonts displayed in the menu of applications still is extremely long and can be very user-unfriendly IMO.

Possible solution
Provide a plugin for MS Office (the most commonly used Office software) for use with FE. It could provide a workaround for the problem/phenomenon described above if it has the following capabilities:
  • A drop-down menu for fonts similar to the one provided by Office itself, but instead of showing all installed (or loaded) fonts, it shows only the fonts from groups that are currently activated (or installed) through FE.
  • This could be either a continuous list of all fonts activated through FE, or one with with sub-headings for the individual groups.
This "FE font list" could then be used instead of the one from Word etc. Thus, for example, by defining a group of a few "standard" fonts, you could radically shorten the dropdown menu to an easily manageable number for everyday use and flexibly add more fonts through activation of other groups as needed. This way, you could not only arrange fonts in groups just as you need them, but also add a managing option to simplify everyday use in another application (e.g. Word).

I have seen such application-specific add-ins from other software that simplifies their use in MS Office. Adobe Acrobat is one (and your plugins for Adobe), but there are also others that provide such functions to hook into Office and make their functions easily accessible within Word (e.g. through a FE ribbon) and enhance overall usability.
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 321
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:20 am
Location: Proxima Software

Re: Plugin for MS Office

Post by admin »

FontExpert does not provide a tool that automatically removes rarely used fonts in system list, but there is a window where you can find some tips on the origin of the font. Where did it come from - from Windows system installation or from MS Office.
Tools | Show Installed Fonts...

See "Known Fonts Comment" column and "Uninstall or Deactivate..." button that allows to uninstall fonts from this window.

Image

https://proximasoftware.com/fe/help/ins ... fonts.html

I will consider creation of this plug-in if MS Office supports plug-ins of this type (selection of a font for a document from a custom plug-in).
So far I thought that MS Office does not allow this. Thank you for suggestion.
font_user
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:00 am

Re: Plugin for MS Office

Post by font_user »

admin wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 5:13 pm FontExpert does not provide a tool that automatically removes rarely used fonts in system list, but there is a window where you can find some tips on the origin of the font. Where did it come from - from Windows system installation or from MS Office.
Tools | Show Installed Fonts...

See "Known Fonts Comment" column and "Uninstall or Deactivate..." button that allows to uninstall fonts from this window.
Thanks for pointing this out. This mitigates the problem somehow, since you get a bit more info about the origin of a font - if that is provided by the software who installs it. However, there is still no information about whether a font is crucial for the proper functioning of an application and it remains trial and error to find out. If there's no way to reliably identify a font that is needed for an application to work properly, this would IMO not be a real solution to the core problem. MS Office for example installs loads of fonts - most of them are just for variety, but some core ones are necessary for the proper functioning of Word etc. - and how to tell which is which?
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 321
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:20 am
Location: Proxima Software

Re: Plugin for MS Office

Post by admin »

FontExpert internally keeps a list of required font faces that are important for Windows, such as Segoe UI used in GUI, Arial used by many programs, and some other fonts. And FontExpert shows warning if user tries to uninstall important or required font. It does not allow to uninstall these fonts. (But the list of required fonts faces is probably not complete. Windows itself does not allow to uninstall some required fonts.)
font_user
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:00 am

Re: Plugin for MS Office

Post by font_user »

admin wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 10:26 am FontExpert internally keeps a list of required font faces that are important for Windows, such as Segoe UI used in GUI, Arial used by many programs, and some other fonts. And FontExpert shows warning if user tries to uninstall important or required font. It does not allow to uninstall these fonts. (But the list of required fonts faces is probably not complete. Windows itself does not allow to uninstall some required fonts.)
You are right. I noticed this when I tried a radical uninstall of fonts. Windows won't let me uninstall these "protected" core fonts. But it will uninstall all others - even if this leads to UI's or other elements (e.g. scrollbars) being disrupted in either Office or other software. And these "unprotected" but necessary fonts are the problem: How can I figure out (without long hours of trial and error) whose uninstall will cause such issues in any application installed on the machine?
Therefore my workaround idea was not to meddle with the installed fonts, but ignore the built-in font selection dropdown of Office for regular use and provide a plugin which will only show fonts from active FontExpert groups for selection. This would make it unnecessary to figure out which fonts are necessary for any application. Of course such a plugin would not solve the problem for other software, but as MS Office is so common, it'd cover already a lot.
Of course the premium solution would be if every application (including MS Office) would simply use the API properly and observe the "hide font" checkbox. But this does not seem to happen in the foreseeable future and thus workarounds are probably the best one can do in the meantime.
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 321
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:20 am
Location: Proxima Software

Re: Plugin for MS Office

Post by admin »

Thank you for suggestion.
Post Reply