Far too many fonts in Windows 7 and 8

I did a clean install of Windows 7 in February. My fonts folder now contains 802 items. I only installed 5 of them myself. The rest clutter up the drop-down lists in Word, etc., because hiding them in Ctrl Panel, Fonts, does no good whatever.

If I try to delete all the foreign-language fonts, they're protected system fonts. If I take ownership of the folder and delete only foreign fonts I don't use, eg Chinese, Microsoft Office goes into a tizz the next time I open it and tries to reinstall the lot.

I've given up trying to rationalize them. But I've also given up trying to choose fonts from the dropdown lists, because it's too hard to find a nice one among the Gungsuhs and Kazukas. I can't even tell which ones are in Latin alphabets.

Is there any decent freeware program that would let me display only Latin alphabets? I'm tired of always using Times New Roman because it's too hard to find a good-looking alternative in my language group.

Mary

I know about the top of the list for recently used fonts. My problem is trying to find a different font for a particular purpose, for instance to add italic lettering in Photoshop. Looking down the list of fonts is mind-numbing. I can't even guess which are in a Latin alphabet. It's easy enough to guess with 'Arabic typesetting' or 'Adobe Fan Heiti', but what about 'Algerian' 'Frank Ruehl' 'Ebrima'?

What I'd like is a 3rd party viewer that would let me make a list of fonts I want to choose among---and see which are Latin. Ctrl Panel Fonts previews displays every font with a Latin alphabet, even ones like Arabic typesetting.

An incidental question. 'Windows-compliant' programs are not supposed to display fonts that I hide via Ctrl Panel, Fonts, Hide. Just what is a Wins compliant program? Not Word or Excel, not Omnipage or Photoshop. Are there in fact any programs that hide user-hidden fonts?

Mary

This any help to you.
How to keep fonts for projects grouped together in Windows 7 | How To - CNET