Avoid losing font styles in PowerPoint

The following scenarios are usually the most frightening: you've spent months preparing the perfect Microsoft powerpoint® presentation for a large professional meeting or a very important board, but when you arrive at a meeting location, the carefully formatted slide format is corrupted by the tedious and unattractive system fonts.

Whether you're preparing the most important presentation of your life, or just want to make sure your slides look compelling on your boss's computer (as on your computer), here are three sample tips you can use to make the slides appear with the fonts you want.

Font tip 1: Use a reliable font

You can use basic fonts, such as XXFarEastFont-Arial, Arial, Bold, and Young.

Advantages: Fast and simple

Disadvantage: tedious and used too much

The quickest and easiest way to ensure that slides are displayed as expected is to use fonts that are used by almost everyone. Fonts such as Arial and Arial may not look the most appealing, but because they are widely used, you can almost always rely on these fonts.

Font Tip 2: Embed fonts

You can select the option "Embed fonts" when you save your presentation.

Advantages: Save the font for your presentation

Disadvantage: Increase the size of the file

You can embed or save any font of the True type font in your presentation. You can determine whether the font is a true type font by looking at the True Type icon (TT) next to the font name in the Font dialog box (Format menu). Embedding fonts increases the file size of your presentation, so you need to be aware of this if you want to save your presentation to disk or send it in e-mail via a slow Internet connection.

Embed fonts in a presentation

On the File menu, click Save As.

In the Save As dialog box, click Tools, and then click Save Options.

In the Save Options dialog box, select the Embed True type font check box, and then select Embed all characters.

Click OK.

Font Tip 3: Package a presentation to run on another computer

You can use the package for CD feature (PowerPoint 2003) or the Pack and Go Wizard (PowerPoint 2002) to bind all your files, including the fonts and graphics that support your presentation.

Benefits: Save all files needed to support PowerPoint presentations

Disadvantage: Additional steps were added at the end of the slide creation process before presentation

If you use the package for CD feature, the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Viewer is included by default, and you can run packaged presentations on other computers, even if you do not have PowerPoint installed. You can also use the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer to view presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and update file formats, as well as password-protected PowerPoint presentations.

If you use the Pack and Go Wizard to package your presentation, you must package the presentation with PowerPoint Viewer.

Note If your presentation is password-protected, the Pack and Go Wizard does not contain Powerpoint 97, and it cannot be used to view a password-protected presentation.