Keep Track of Your Fonts with Free Software
by Rebecca Ludens

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Related Resources • Free Font Links • Free Easter Font from pcHugWare  • Free St. Patrick's Day Font from pcHugware

From Other Guides • The definitive list of Free Font links from About's Guide to Desktop Publishing

Elsewhere on the Web • Font Packages from Creating Keepsakes

Fonts, fonts, and more fonts are what scrapbookers are looking for on the internet. Thousands of free fonts are available for you to download to your computer. Over the next few weeks, this series of font articles will address the most frequently asked questions about using fonts for scrapbooking.

This week we focus on Font Management. How do you keep track of which fonts you have installed? How do you find which one you need for the special scrapbook layout? How do you know how many fonts you have installed on your computer? Here are a couple of the best free downloadable programs to help you manage your fonts.

akFont Viewer

This is a nice, simple, and very popular program for font management. You can view the fonts that you have installed on your computer in an alphabetical list. By clicking on "print" in the File menu on the task bar of the program, you can print out a sample list of fonts with each name written in the style of that font. The text size of the samples can be adjusted allowing you to fit many or few samples on each page, as you wish.

Sample screen shot of the akFontViewer

The area labeled number 1 in the figure above shows the font you have highlighted from the list in larger text for easy viewing. You can use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to quickly "flip through" and view all of your installed fonts. Number 2 shows the alphabetical list just as it will print on the sample page.

To go to the akFontViewer developer's website and download the program for free, click here.

The Font Thing

If you are looking for more options in your font management program then you may want to consider The Font Thing. This program allows you to organize your fonts into categories, view fonts that you haven't installed yet, and print out custom designed font sample sheets. I especially like that I can print out sample pages of just the fonts in a certain category. This lets me, for example, put all of my "formal" fonts in one group and print out a sample page of that group. My "kids" fonts are in another group. The "handwriting" fonts are in another group, and so on.

Sample screen shot of The Font Thing

As you can tell simply from looking at The Font Thing's screen shot, it has many more options on the tool and task bars. One especially handy feature is the "uninstall" button, which allows you to remove installed fonts neatly from your computer. I also like that you can customize the sample sentence or phrase. Instead of just printing the name of the font in each style, you can print a whole sample sentence. This gives you a much more comprehensive reference sheet when you are trying to pick which font you want to use on a specific layout. Since both of the programs are free downloads, you may want to try out each of them to determine which one has the features that are most important to you and how you manage your fonts.

To go to The Font Thing developer's website and download the program for free, click here. Once at this site, you will need to click on "Download" in the upper right hand corner of the window for download information and selections.

Have questions about using, installing, or finding fonts? Send them with "Ask Rebecca About Fonts" in the subject line to scrapbooking.guide@about.com, and you may see your question answered in future editions of this column.

Need your font question answered right away? Visit the About Scrapbooking Forum.

Find an extensive list of Free Font links here on About Scrapbooking.