Embedding Fonts in Excel

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 21, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


If you are familiar with Word and PowerPoint, you may have noticed that both programs allow you to embed fonts in documents or presentations. This is very handy, particularly if you feel that someone else receiving your document or presentation may not have your font on their system.

Unfortunately, Excel does not allow you to embed fonts in workbooks. Word has an intimate relationship with something in concrete reality: the printed page. Almost everything it does is in relationship to how something will be printed, and Word queries the printer driver many times during an editing session in order to represent information accurately onscreen. PowerPoint, as well, makes at least some reference to what can be printed or displayed onscreen.

Excel, on the other hand, is not all that interested in printing because a worksheet is really just a representation of a set of quantities and relationships--things which are fundamentally abstract. In fact, it wasn't until Excel 95 that Excel's default font was changed to Arial (a TrueType font) instead of MS Sans-Serif (a non-scalable screen font whose printing vagaries are legion).

If you really must embed fonts to make your worksheet appear properly, there is one thing you can try: Embed the Excel worksheet in a Word document in which the desired font is also embedded. You will need to make sure, of course, that the font you've chosen is embeddable (some are not). When someone else opens the document, they may see the information as you intended. Of course, they will need to use Word instead of Excel for viewing the information.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (1969) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Counting Characters in a Selection with VBA

Need to figure out the number of characters in a range of selected text? Here's how to do it in VBA.

Discover More

Jumping to a Section

One way you can navigate through a document is to jump from section to section. Here's the traditional way to quickly get ...

Discover More

Stopping Word from Changing Characters in an E-mail Address

When you type an e-mail address, Word generally recognizes it as such. What do you do, though, if Word changes the e-mail ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Changing Excel's Starting Date

When keeping track of dates, internally, Excel uses special date serial numbers that are based upon a specific day in the ...

Discover More

Saving Non-Existent Changes

Open a workbook, look at the data, start to close the workbook, and you are asked if you want to save your changes. What ...

Discover More

Inserting the User's Name in a Cell

Need to understand who is using a particular workbook? There are a number of ways you can find out, as discussed in this tip.

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 4 - 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.