There seems to be an issue with having a large number of directories within the “My Font Groups” folder. I am still trying to find the best way to organize my fonts and at the moment I have the organized by foundry. Within each foundry’s folder are folders for each font. For some reason if their are greater than 500 directories it will not show any more below that point. Has anyone mentioned this issue in the past? Could this be something on my end?
dp
I never thought someone would create such a large amouint of groups. I’ve added a 500 folder limit, in case someone points the Groups Folder to the root of a drive. 
I might need to reconsider this, but still want to protect inexperienced users from accidentally deleting a group that contains more than just fonts. Ideas are welcome.
I’ll admit that even to me it seems crazy to have that many directories. My problem may be the way in which I’ve organized my fonts. Does anybody else have their fonts organized in this way? I’d prefer to do it by style but that would mean I’d have to go through all my fonts and manually choose what style it is…and that seems like a waste of time. Actually, one other thing that I should probably mention in a seperate area but what the heck:
What about a search function for the groups tab? At times I’m looking for a specific name but because of how I’ve grouped my fonts (by foundry) it can be hard to find. Turns out remember what fonts every foundry makes isn’t easy.
Sorry man, I have no idea for how you could do it so they could delete their whole hard drive. I’ll do some thinkin’ and post if I come up with anything brilliant.
Thanks for your response. I’m positive you’ll receive some advise from other users that helps you organize your fonts.
I forgot to mention MainType already refuses to set the Groups folder to a system wide folder. In this context, a system wide folder is a folder that itself contains the Windows folder. For example, when your Windows is installed in C:\Windows, you are not allowed to set the Groups folder to either C: or C:\Windows, but you are still able to set it to C:\Fonts, D: etc.
Hi dp,
If I had your interest in Foundrys, I would have a group “Foundrys” folder with a sub folder for each Foundry, then just place the fonts wherever they belong without more folders. That will save you a ton of folder space. You may have to break a few folders down into subfolders A-F, G-L, etc.
As for your Actual Fonts, (if you HAVE to keep extra font folder information, do it in a zip file somewhere else) use Alpha-Numeric folders, “E:/Fonts/Aa-Ad” or whatever your Total Collection requires to keep the number below 1,000 - 5,000 fonts per folder. That will allow you to eliminate “dupes” and quickly find your font if you can remember the first letter of the name but not the foundry. Be sure to make a CD backup!
Finally, (and for me, Most Importantly) I’d use Font Creator to add Panose information to any font that did not have it so you could find any style of font without having to put them in any special group categories to sort for them. See:
davecrosby,
I suppose my thing for foundries is kind of misguided at times. I mean, I’m only trying to organize fonts here. I thinkg the reason I do it is that at times I can remember what styles some foundries release better than the font name.
I have thought about doing the “A-F, G-L” organization structure but what’s keeping me back is the thought of having to scroll through 30 variations of Myriad Pro to see what’s below it. I enjoy being able to have it in a directory and skip over it if need be.
I think I have found the best way for me to keep my style of font organization (as flawed as it may be) and still use MT in all it’s glory. I think I will use the “Browse” tab to sort through my Foundry listing and will only use the “Groups” tab for sorting fonts relating to clients and such.
At the same time, I’m open to new ways of organizing my fonts. Davecrosby, do you organize your fonts in the same way you recommended? Do you find that works well for you?
To make a short story long, many years ago I purchased the MasterClips collection of 2,000 fonts and jammed everything I liked into my Windows Fonts file. When parts and pieces started flying out of my wheezing computer, I moved most of them into a separate file.
I’ve gone through 8-10 computers since then and collected an additional 40,000 fonts. I know people with over 200,000. I tried numerous font managers. I organized and re-organized my fonts every way I could think of. Nothing really worked well.
In Feb 2004 I needed a specific font that did not yet exist, so I started searching for a font editor and found Font Creator. At that time I had around 10,000 fonts in 60 different folders, some by foundry, some by designer, some by country, some by time periods, some by Collection Name, some by date of acquisition, and no clue as to how many duplicates.
My font collection was about worthless, because I could never find the one I thought I could remember having.
Then I discovered Panose! Alas, most fonts that don’t come from top Foundries have not been panosed.
Then I discovered MainType and re-organized the collection two more times. I was forced into a second hard drive.
In short, my first answer is the best I have found. The only thing I do different from your collection is that my Groups are by Project names and Panose groups for those that I have not yet inserted the Panose Numbers.
In the next release I’ll drop the maximum number of groups limit.
I have had some experience in organizing font files – I have been organizing them and reorganizing them for about 6 years now…
Best arrangement that I have found is to have a single giant alphabetical file where each file name has been changed (renamed) to be internal font name. I do a lot of work trying to find fonts by font name and this works correctly for that. This is my “Master File” of fonts. Everything else is a copy.
I can scan/search for Designer or Foundry names when I need to so I don’t keep permanent groups for those two characteristics. I then copy from the main file to a new directory if I need to do something with them. At the end of that exercise I may delete all the fonts in the Designer directory – because they are copies and can be regenerated at will.
Design and subject matter subsets are copies of fonts from the main file and are setup in separate directories according to your wishes. You have to look at each individual font to decide what group it belongs in. Labor intensive.
The use of MainType Groups absolutely enables this business but again they are to be considered copies (or shortcuts) from the main file and not moved from the main file and you have to look at each one.
Duplicate Elimination is an evolving process: get rid of same name/same size/same date files. Resolve fonts which have same name but different size &/or different date. Make sure to keep fonts with the same name but have different styles or from a different vendor. I go until I’m tired then keep both duplicates!
Once a font is renamed I’ll keep every misspelled variation in the Main File – since I use it to look up font names. It’s when I select fonts for Groups that I worry whether I have design duplicates or not – and there the font name matters very little as the same design comes from multiple sources. I must look at all the variations and pick the best one to keep. Very labor intensive.
The fonts I look at by style tend to be unusual ones: alphas, animals, Arabic, architect, army, Asian, astrology. And the B’s are … I have 61 overall categories right now.
FINALLY! 61 is not enough so I have put together a database which can describe each font in very gory detail so that I can find a font with specific characteristics (similar to the Identifont approach). Of course, that deals with copies of the main file and takes at least 5 minutes per font. But these are the “Cream of the Cream” – the finest free fonts in the world… and well worth it. Very, very labor intensive.
My goals have changed over the years as I’ve gotten more and more fonts. I thought I could separate all the fonts into nice neat groups and associate a font to a single one style. Unfortunately, I couldn’t arrange them by Font name, Foundry, Script and Gothic/Old English all at the same time but this seems to do it – by keeping copies of interesting fonts.
There are bunches of issues that I still worry about: have I saved the “right” version of a font, do I have the latest version of a font, what’s the real name of this font, who’s the real designer, does it have hinting or not, etc.
There are programs to help at each step in this process: renamers, alphabetizers, Windows Explorer replacement!, MainType, database. You need them all to maintain a font collection.
I feel good that I’ve got some control over my collection, but I don’t have 200k fonts yet because I don’t save Type 1’s (because Font Creator doesn’t support T1). Please no Type 1 support Erwin, please. My wife pleads to you too…