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I'm using a lot of custom fonts for design purposes and I'd like to backup those fonts. If I go to the Fonts folder in Windows Explorer, it seems to load some sort of special font management window.
Is backing up as simple as copying the fonts to another (backup) folder through drag and drop? Will my fonts just install into a fresh Windows install by copying them back to the Fonts folder?
I'm about to perform a re-install and I'd hate to find out it's not as simple as that the hard way!
Furthermore, is there a way to only backup the fonts I installed myself? (I.e., not the fonts that are installed on Windows by default.)
1But from the font manager window, can I just copy and paste from and to it? Will it copy out the raw font files? – BloodPhilia – 2011-05-25T18:33:23.857
It should work, but I don't trust Windows Explorer for copying things because it sometimes puts files in the wrong places. Doing a test copy this way just now resulted in asking me if I wanted to overwrite a duplicate font file in the destination folder (which was empty before I tried to "Paste" all my fonts in there), which certainly supports my concerns about Windows Explorer's reliability problems -- there shouldn't be any duplicate filenames when copying to a new (blank) directory (folder). – Randolf Richardson – 2011-05-25T18:37:39.167
1So is there a better, more reliable way you'd recommend? – BloodPhilia – 2011-05-25T18:40:32.217
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Yeah, use XCOPY (a DOS command) with the "/s /e" command-line switches. There are other tools that can copy files as well, or you can use 7-Zip (free open source from http://www.sevenzip.sourceforge.net/) or a similar tool like WinRAR or WinZip to compress them into a single archive file (then just copy that file and extract it on the destination computer). If you ever used Norton Commander in the past (and liked it), then you'll probably want to use a tool like FAR Manager (free and open source): http://www.farmanager.com/
– Randolf Richardson – 2011-05-25T18:43:49.690