Font Forum

Over the years I have amassed thousands of fonts, many of them duplicates. Is there any way that I can just point Maintype at the folder (with its many subfolders) and say import one copy of each font and save the files somewhere else in one folder that I can then divide (alphabetically or by font type) into subfolders?

If not, is there something that can do this?

Yes, it is fairly easy to get unique font files with help of MainType. As you already mentioned, do add the root of your font folder structure to MainType's Fonts Folder dialog. Then go to the Library view, select all fonts, and export them to a new folder.

But why bother with duplicates, as MainType will never show true duplicates? Our font manager "thinks" in fonts not in files, so you can focus on the fonts.

I'm giving that a go. Disk space is a reason for me wanting to get rid of duplicate files. If I import everything and then export to a new folder - after removing the original folder from my Maintype library am I OK to delete the files in the original (full of duplicates) folder?

Yes, that should do it. Even though I'm convinced it will work, better first make sure it works before deleting your original font folder.

I have added all the fonts to my library and then exported them all to a new folder. However, even though I have removed the folder from the library list and clicked "refresh" I still have a library full of fonts. I want to add the exported fonts, but I'd like an empty library. I can't seem to get this. When I try to delete the fonts from the library I can, but only 5000 at a time.

Is there a database file for the library that I can delete/rename to get me back to an empty library?

To start all over, you will need to fully uninstall MainType and then reinstall it. But in the end MainType will again contain all fonts, so there is not much to gain in my opinion.

Before I exported the entire library I deleted through Maintype any corrupted fonts (there were many!). Then I uninstalled and reinstalled. I broke the font files into Alphabetical subfolders - more for my sanity than anything else!

Then I added the exported and sub-divided folder to the library and, a couple of hours later I have a "clean" library.
There are still many potential duplicates - different version of the same font, etc. But I can now easily spot them and delete fonts I don't want.

Good to hear you're up and running with your fonts and MainType.