Under the File menu is functionality to
“Open installed font …”
When I click it, the GUI shows a status message
“Updating the list of installed fonts”
for a while.
In the past this has worked fine for me.
Recently I attempted to install ~100 font files. Something went wrong. Part of it may be that I foolishly installed many (~70?) of those ~100 by right-clicking and opting to “Install” (copy to user profile) rather than “Install for all users” (copy to C:\Windows\Fonts).
Anyway, FontCreator did not show any of those ~100 fonts as installed.
I trawled around the registry, and found that
Computer\HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-349949321-367232124-2914762605-1002\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\MathFonts
and
Computer\HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-349949321-367232124-2914762605-1002\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Panose
appeared to be up-to-date, but
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
and
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
were definitely out-of-date. Namely, they mentioned a handful of fonts that I don’t remember ever having, and which do not exist under C:\Windows\Fonts or the equivalent user-profile location. Moreover, they omitted most/all of the ~100 fonts I’d installed.
Yet those ~100 fonts showed up as accessible in places like Character Map and MS Office.
I tried the following:
- I rebooted
- I ‘copied’ all fonts (~70) from the user-profile folder to C:\Windows\Fonts
- Windows then automatically deleted the fonts from the user-profile folder (to avoid duplication)
- I rebooted
- It didn’t change behaviour of FontCreator
- I entered the registry and renamed the Fonts branch key to “Fonts.bak” (I thought I did it only under WOW6432Node, but maybe it was only the x64 branch.)
- I rebooted
- I was hoping that Windows would auto-generate a new correctly populated Fonts key. Well, it just created a new empty Fonts key!
- When I logged in, seemingly only the ~100 recently installed font files were available to Windows, plus a tiny number of others (Marlett, System, and Fixedsys, I think) …although the ~300 previously installed font files were still present in C:\Windows\Fonts
- I exported the “Fonts.bak” key to a text file
- I edited the exported key to remove references to files not/never present, and add references to newly installed files.
- I imported the amended key to “Fonts”
- I rebooted.
- Windows now looked correct again: all relevant font files under C:\Windows\Fonts, and appropriate references in place in the registry.
- But FontCreator still refuses to show those recently installed fonts!
Details:
- I am on Windows 10, after upgrading from Windows 8.1 roughly a year ago.
- It’s FontCreator 11.5. Yes, I know it’s an old version, you don’t need to tell me that. It is sufficient for my casual interest in fonts.
- The font files are a mixture of OTF and TTF, with a variety of licensing, file sizes, glyph coverage, etc. They are all (AFAIK) free for at least personal use, downloaded from popular internet sites.
- FontCreator can see a font that I’d installed a few months ago (circa March 2025).
I cannot figure out why FontCreator wouldn’t be able to update its list of installed fonts now.
If it checked the files saved in C:\Windows\Fonts, then it should find them.
If it checks the registry at
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
or
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts
then it should now find them.
I had a look through
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\High-Logic\FontCreator
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\High-Logic
C:\Program Files\High-Logic FontCreator
C:\Users...\AppData\Local\FontCreator
and
C:\Users...\AppData\Roaming\FontCreator
But there was no obvious listing of fonts in any of those places.
My main speculative theory now is that there is one buggy font file/specification that is causing the listing of installed fonts by FontCreator to terminate prematurely. But that’s only because I’ve run out of other explanations.
On that topic, I perhaps should mention for completeness that 8 files that I attempted to install in that set were rejected by Windows because of “missing head table”. However, AFAIK that meant that those defective/incomplete files were never copied, never installed, and don’t show up in the registry. (I also tried opening them in FontCreator, but could not.)
Anyway, whilst any tips (except for advice to pay for an upgrade) will be welcome, I am particularly interested to know how FontCreator generates/updates its list of installed fonts?