Windows 10 Install Font For All Users

[Claudio Davey]

ButI'd like to know where user-specific fonts are stored. For example, when I right click on a font, I have the option to Install or Install for all users, so I presume the generic Install will install it to an %appdata% folder or similar? I just can't find where that folder is.

Hello all - I have an open type font thisfont.otf that our company bought and I want to install it for all Windows users on each of our PCs. We want this to happen in the background without any user intervention or inconvenience. Ideally avoid reboots or logging out the user for the change to go into effect. In looking online, many of the results are outdated (before Windows 10 1809) or require a reboot/log out. (For example the top hit when googling this was a Prajwal Desai article written for SCCM 2012 and the comments seem like it's no longer working.)

It was pure powershell. My OTF font file is copied into C:\Windows\Fonts and then added to the HKLM registry key to make it available to all users. No log out or reboot was needed. I will test more tomorrow. Make sure the font shows up properly in different programs. But today I had Wordpad open before the install and after it was installed, I could find the font in the WordPad font drop down menu without having to close it and reopen. Real time.

One gotcha (as others noted) was copying/pasting the command line for the script into your SCCM/MECM console. Doing this from the web page distorted the characters in the command line and the powershell will fail on the PC. I manually typed it in and then it worked great.

Open the folder that contains the unzipped files and right-click the font that you want to install. Click Install from the context menu to install the font on your user account, or Install for all users to install the font on all user accounts.

The Fonts options will open in the Settings app. Drag and drop the font file that you want to install into the Add Fonts section. The font will begin installing. The installation process takes only a few seconds.

As you can see, the process for installing fonts is relatively straightforward, and there are a few different ways to do it. If you want to take your font game to the next level, you can even make your own using Microsoft Font Maker. Give it a shot!

Although I agree with @Kkyishkkii on this, I am going to give you a possible solution. We had a computer that was used specifically to test out new fonts and in order to allow this, we just gave the users full access to the registry key:

Having got the font install issue sorted out under XP just fine, recently we've got a Windows 7 workstation and I've created a special GPO for it. Initially it was UAC that was demanding administrative access to C:\windows\fonts despite the fact the policy dictates that directory is writable (as is the relevant registry entries, on XP anyway). The issue now though is that when I try to copy a font or hit install it claims that the font "does not appear to be a valid font". This happens with every type of font as well.

Well I can only suggest you have the UAC turned off because I have taken ownership and set the Windows 7 font directory and registry key permissions to allow users change access but the UAC keeps prompting for administrator credentials.

You could try to use the Silent Install Builder from Apreltech at This program builds MSI or EXE packages containing a font registry scripts. You could deploy Silent Install Builder's MSI through GPO.

Are you tired of using the same old fonts on your Windows 10 computer? Why get stuck when there are several ways you can install fonts on Windows 10? Having new fonts to use can be exciting as they can bring new life to your work.

Note: That the succeeding font installation methods install new fonts in the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts directory of the current user only by default. If you want to install fonts for all users on the computer, skip to the Using the Font Viewer (All Users) section.

Microsoft gives its Windows 10 users the ability to install apps directly from the Microsoft Store. But did you know that aside from apps, the Microsoft Store also lets you install fonts on Windows 10?

5. After Microsoft Store completed the installation, you will see a message saying This product is installed. To exit Microsoft Store, click the X button in the upper-right corner. Or, if you want to install more fonts, you can repeat the same steps.

Under the Add fonts section, you should see a rectangular area that says Drag and drop to install. This area is you can drop one or more font files from your computer to install.

3. On the Control Panel window, click the search box on the top right and type in fonts to search for the Fonts Control Panel item. On the search results, click the Fonts Control Panel item to open the Fonts window.

After selecting the font files, click to hold the files, drag them to the Fonts Control Panel window, and release the mouse button to drop the files. Dropping the files will automatically install the fonts on your computer.

There may be times when you need to uninstall fonts from your computer. Such as when you no longer need the font or if you plan to install an updated version of the font. Whatever the reason, know the there are ways to uninstall fonts in Windows 10 you can perform.

2. You should now be in the Fonts list in Control Panel. To uninstall a font, click to select the font and click the Delete button. You can also select multiple fonts by holding down the CTRL key while clicking on each font.

This article showed you how not to get stuck with the same set of system fonts, which can be boring over time. You learned the different ways to install fonts in Windows 10 and how to uninstall them, too. Which method did you like best?

In this post we will explore how to deploy fonts to Windows 10 devices at scale programmatically. I know some of you may be thinking - "I've deployed fonts many times over the years - what's the problem?". And I guess the rest of you are here because you've hit the same difficulties I did when I was tasked with deploying custom fonts across an organisation. Since Windows 10 version 1809 the steps required to automate this installation using scripts have changed. Most articles and blogs you find online will feature code that simply copies the font files to the C:\Windows\Fonts folder - these will no longer work.

The next section of this post is an analysis of what has changed and why the previous method no longer works. If you don't give a shit and just want to know how to do this so you can get on with your day then scroll down until you see the Solution heading.

Next, we're creating a new Shell.Application object and then calling the Namespace method while passing our CLSID set above. This is creating a folder object for the Fonts folder and storing it in the $Folder variable. We can use $Folder.self to display more information on the folder object.

Seems simple enough right? If you go ahead and put all of that together and run it you'll find the font is installed and useable. Now go ahead and log in as any other user account and you'll find the font does not show.

The key thing that changed in 1809 was the release of a new feature that allowed users to install new fonts without the need for administrator rights. If you right-click a font file you will see there are now two install options "Install" and "Install for all users"

After cutting out most of the noise we are left with the three entries above. We can see that the font is copied to the Appdata folder but there is also a registry value created in the users registry hive.

Let's run the old method again from the section above and perform the same analysis. I'm going to run the script from an elevated Powershell prompt using an account that has local administrator privileges. One would assume that this would have the same outcome as the "Install for all users" right-click option.

As you can see this creates that crucial registry key in the Current User hive and not the Local Machine hive, and the file is copied to the AppData folder of the user (and not the central C:\Windows\Fonts folder). This results in the account running the script being the only user that can see the font. This is far from ideal when you deploy fonts at scale as you are likely using a tool such as Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deploy these in an automated fashion. The way these tools work without the user having administrative rights is by running the scripts/installers/packages as another user that does have administrative rights such as a service account.

When you install fonts with the Font Viewer Install button, they end up in the User Fonts folder.

This was added in a Windows 10 update to enable users without admin rights to install fonts.

Always better to install fonts using Install for All Users if you can.

The issue "2.5.x Windows users missing fonts after updating" (REF: AF-3196) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.5.2.2483".

This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.

Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.

If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.

Font Book automatically checks for duplicates when you install a font, and shows a message if the font is already installed. You can choose whether to keep both versions, skip font installation, or replace the existing font with the new font.

So far, so good (and inline with question How do I install fonts?) However, when I then open any font dialog (e.g. in OpenOffice or the font dialog of the terminal) I don't see all of the new fonts. For Arial, the standard form is missing, but bold and italic are there. Times New Roman is missing altogether.

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