Install and Delete Fonts in Windows the Easy Way

Starting with Windows 7 and continuing to Windows 10, the process for managing fonts in Windows has become much more streamlined and easier to use. Whether you are a professional who needs to install lots of fonts for your work or someone who wants to speed up their computer by getting rid of useless fonts, Windows makes it easy to perform either task. If you do run into any trouble along the way, such as when trying to delete a font, I’ve also posted alternate methods to help troubleshoot the problem. Note that the procedures below can be accomplished in Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10. If there is anything operating specific, I will mention that separately.

How to Install a Font

Once you have downloaded your font file, go ahead and open the folder where your font is saved. Now double-click on the font file.

A window will appear where you will get to see a preview of all the numbers and letters for that font. It will also show you a sample sentence in different font sizes. To install the font on your system, click the Install button at the top.

That’s it! Your font is now installed! If you open a program like Word, you’ll see it should now be there in the list of fonts. You can select it and start typing with the new font.

How to Delete a Font

Deleting a font is almost just as easy.  First, open Control Panel and click on the Fonts folder. If you’re in Category view, go ahead and switch to Icon view.

Select the font you want to delete and then click the Delete button towards the top of the window.

If all goes well, your font should be removed from your system. Now there are a few situations where you might run into problems. Firstly, you might get a message stating that the font cannot be deleted because it is in use.

If you run into this problem, you should first close all programs and try again. If that doesn’t work, try restarting your computer and then deleting the font. As a last resort, you can restart in Safe Mode and then try to delete it.
Another way to delete the font is via the Windows registry. Before you edit anything, make sure to backup the registry. Now click on Start and type in regedit. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

Find the font in the list on the right, then right-click and choose Delete. You will be able to delete the font file even if you were getting the in-use message earlier. Note that if you have 64-bit Windows installed, you also need to go to this registry key and delete the font from here too:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

After you have deleted the key from both locations, go ahead and restart the computer for the changes to take effect. The font should now be gone from all programs.
This method can also be used to delete fonts that are protected system fonts. For example, let’s say you wanted to delete Times New Roman. If you tried via the Control Panel, you’ll get an error message.

You can, however, go into the registry and get rid of the font there. Make sure to restart your computer after deleting the entries from the registry. There really isn’t any good reason to delete protected system fonts, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
If you already have installed a bunch of fonts on your computer and now don’t want to have some many extra fonts installed, you can check out my previous post on how to restore the default Windows fonts.
Finally, you can also create your own font and then install it using this guide!