How many fonts is too many?

Planetspectra · 01 Aug 2010

Hi there.

I do love to collect fonts but I think I many have made a mistake by adding them all to my recent clean install of Win 7 64bit. There is approximately 38,000 of them currently installed and my C:\Windows\fonts folder is weighing in at around 2.5Gb

Open Office seems to cope OK but Adobe Bridge/Photoshop CS5 doesn't seem to be able to manage at all. That is to say that files containing text elements, when opened, cause the software to hang indefinitely when it should be loading the font list.

Other than deleting all non essential fonts and being more selective in future, can anyone please advise a better way to manage a large collection of fonts in this situation?

The Howling Wolves · 01 Aug 2010

I put a lot of them on my thumb drive for easy access to the good ones. IMO

mitchell65 · 01 Aug 2010

Why not leave the twenty five fonts you use most and keep the rest of your collection in a separate folder named "Archive Fonts" or something like that.
Frankly to have 38,000 fonts on your hard drive gets very close to being ridiculous (IMHO):)I'm not at all surprised that some of your programs stall at loading them up. It's a wonder your PC doesn't fall over with the weight!
Mind you I may be prejudiced as I started using a desk top publishing program with Windows 3.0 and had just 5 fonts plus two system fonts called MS small and MS medium. The forerunners I suppose to Ariel.
There's a thought, if you take up my idea do make sure that you leave any fonts in the font folder that your system uses including your programs!

huffman · 02 Aug 2010

I don't know about Win 7 recommended maximum fonts, but Microsoft used to recommend a maximum of 500 fonts for Win XP.

Dzomlija · 02 Aug 2010

I try to keep my installed fonts to a minimum (an Old-Skool habit from my early days).

I do have a fonts library handy, that I manage with Bitstream Font Navigator (included with CorelDraw X4) which automatically installs fonts as I need them if I open a document that uses fonts that are not installed...

mitchell65 · 02 Aug 2010

Dzomlija said:

I try to keep my installed fonts to a minimum (an Old-Skool habit from my early days).

I do have a fonts library handy, that I manage with Bitstream Font Navigator (included with CorelDraw X4) which automatically installs fonts as I need them if I open a document that uses fonts that are not installed...

That seems a perfect solution. Alos there is a way to download the Bitstream Font Manager from here:
Font Management Solution: Bitstream Font Navigator (Noscope)

Planetspectra · 02 Aug 2010

Thanks folks.

I did a system restore to get out of this aforesaid problem of my own devising - that'll teach me!

I'll try out the Bitstream Font Navigator but does anyone know any other good free alternatives out there that work with Win7 64bit?

Moondragon · 20 Oct 2013

38,000 fonts! ROFL
that made my day..... still laughing