Install Windows Fonts in Ubuntu

The story of this post comes from having installed dropbox on the laptop with Lucid lynx at home and at the same time on the PC under Windows in the office.

The problem arose every time I created a file in Word or Excel in the office and then continued editing it in OpenOffice at home, because as I am not to change the fonts that come by default when creating documents, when I opened the document in OpenOffice, not recognizing the font, I replaced it with a similar one, which forced me to rearrange the entire document , especially tables and graphs.

But hey, searching I found two possible solutions to this simple question:

In the first place, we can do everything in an easy and fast way, without a hitch in between, but perhaps in a somewhat questioned way:

  1. "We borrow" from a Windows PC the sources we need from: C: \ Windows \ Fonts \
  2. In Ubuntu we run the console and access the source folder with root privileges
  3. $ sudo nautilus / usr / share / fonts /
  4. We create a folder where we will copy the fonts that we want to install, for example: / usr / share / fonts / ttf /
  5. We copy the fonts we need into this folder.
  6. Finally we reset the cache with this command:
  7. $ sudo fc-cache -f -v
  8. We run OpenOffice and open the file created in Office eg. with the Calibrí font, we are going to notice now that the document will be displayed
    with the correct font.

The other alternative, more discreet and "more morally sensible" would be to download the Power Point Viewer 2007

As it is a windows executable, we will have to extract the sources from it with this soft: cabextract, which, as its name indicates, allows us to extract all the content of executables, cabinet files, etc.

We download the software, and once installed, we start with the extraction in this way:

  1. We open the console and go to the folder where we download the PowerPointViewer.exe file
  2. We execute the following command:
  3. $ cabextract PowerPointViewer.exe
    $ cabextract ppviewer.cab
  4. Done this we went to our system sources folder / usr / share / fonts / and we create a folder where we will host the sources we need
  5. $ sudo mkdir / usr / share / fonts / ttf /
  6. From the folder where we unpack the executable we copy the sources to the folder we create
  7. sudo mv * .ttf / usr / share / fonts / ttf /
  8. Finally we reset the cache:
  9. sudo fc-cache -f -v
  10. We run OpenOffice again and open the file created in Office eg. with the Calibrí source, and we will obtain the same results as with the previous option.

How we see up to here, we have these two options, one more "clean" than the other but no less functional.

Needless to say, these sources are in no way free to use So if you want to use these sources in a commercial project, think about it.

Obviously these options are applicable when installing the fonts that we need for any software that uses them or to change the System fonts and give our desktop a unique touch.

I hope it was clear and understandable on this one, "My first post" and do your job: "to help".


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  1.   GF said

    And why not use a simple but effective:

    sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

    1.    Mauro gabriel said

      GF: What you mention would be the usual alternative that I would use if I needed those fonts, in this particular case I was in need of Office 2007 fonts such as Calibri, Cambria, Candara, etc. to include them in the system.
      Since the msttcorefonts package does not include them, then I saw the need to obtain them in these two ways that I mention, and in the process show how to install other fonts that I might need.
      Thanks for your input.

  2.   Luciano Lagassa said

    hello, there is another alternative that is to install ubuntu-restricted-extras, it is a pack that has sources, flash, java and codecs.

    sudo apt-get -y install ubuntu-restricted-extras

    and thus have the sources some of winbugs.

    1.    novalettres said

      the same case of GF, since that package is contained within ubuntu-restricted-extras

  3.   Dave said

    The method you mention does not always work, when updating the cache certain problems arise and the sources are not indexed correctly.

    The safe way is to install them manually with a double click on the font we want, although it becomes a tedious job if we want to add them all.

    1.    Mauro gabriel said

      new letters:

      In my case, I had copied the fonts from a PC with Windows 7 and Office 2007, I copied the ones I needed the most, about 32 in total, but only TrueType fonts.

      In the folder / usr / share / fonts / truetype / create a folder ttf-seven and copy the 32 fonts, update the cache and I took the trouble to check if all the fonts were installed and it was.

      Maybe when you copy enough fonts you get to have this problem either due to duplication or some type of unsupported font.

      1.    novalettres said

        If there were many sources, a 120 or something like that (like 3 days collecting guevadas in the network my wife and I.), truetype, naaa any type it was

  4.   Snake! said

    Sacrilege install things manually as superuser X_X

    It's as simple as copying the fonts into ~ / .fonts (if the folder doesn't exist, create it)
    Greetings!.

  5.   Javier Gascón said

    I did sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts, without result, I will continue analyzing, by the way one of my favorite singers is Jorge Cafrune who was from Jujuy, he had a powerful voice, he died young in circumstances not clarified. regards

  6.   Javier Gascón said

    I did sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts, without result, I will continue analyzing, by the way one of my favorite singers is Jorge Cafrune who was from Jujuy, he had a powerful voice, he died young in circumstances not clarified. regards

  7.   Krongar said

    It is easier than all that. With installing font manager from the software center you can install the fonts you want by simply dragging the files to a group