Editor's Note: This article appeared in the December issue of the printed newsletter, but was inadvertently omitted from the online edition. The fonts discussed in the article did not appear in the printed version, and because of the limitations of the web, may not appear in the online version. To see the article as it was intended to be seen, click here for an Adobe Acrobat version. Enjoy!

Did you ever lose a font?  A year or so ago I made up and printed a sheet of business cards that I was happy with.  Last week, I gave away my last one. (I go through about one card a month) When I opened the business card again (in Corel Draw-7), it complained, that it could not find the font Andy Bold, and asked which font to substitute.

Let me mention that I am not much of a font person.  I usually couldn't care less about which font to use. I am an engineer, more interested in the meaning of the words than in how they are drawn.  Arial, Courier, and Times New Roman are about all I ever use.  But for my business card, I wanted something to reflect my casual insouciance, and convey the fact that I have a passion for informality, and that I am really not looking for work.  Since I had put a good 10-15 minutes into the original font selection, I was somewhat concerned, and more than somewhat irritated that it was no longer available.  So, I decided to hunt the critter down.

First, I looked for "Andy" in every font folder on 3 computers. (I couldn't remember which machine I had used to print the cards.)  Nothing like Andy Bold anywhere. Then I remembered, Windows applications (for the most part) keep their fonts in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder, and most applications just reach into this folder to use a font. And applications rarely delete their fonts when they are uninstalled. So any font that was ever put on a computer is likely still there, unless major surgery has been done. This fact pointed to my laptop computer as the culprit, as I had recently done a clean-install of WindowsXP, where-as the other computers had been little changed over the year. Regular experimentation had caused numerous apps to be installed on the laptop, then when the new version of Windows was installed, only those apps still needed were re-installed.

But which of those non-reinstalled applications came with the Andy Bold font? First a web-search on "lost font"--wow, I am not the only one who has lost a font.  Over 300 web pages containing "lost font", none of which were very promising. Many of the links were inactive, and advertising overwhelmed others, but I was getting nowhere. Another search on "Andy Bold", only a few hits this time, and here was a "Bulkley Valley Christian" school web page, with a note that to appreciate the page you needed to have Andy Bold installed on your computer.  And there was a link promising to let me download AndyB.ttf !  Unfortunately, it was another broken link. Most likely, someone had remembered that the fonts are copyrighted, and shouldn't be downloaded.

In frustration, I finally gave-up, and printed 2 new sheets of business cards in Balloon.  or Plump or Poster Boldoni, not sure which. Of course, the new cards were not out of the printer when I had another thought--maybe someone at Microsoft had considered this problem. Sure enough they had. It is not easy to find, but once you know where to look,
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.asp has a search engine which will allow you to find which applications came with which fonts. 

A quick lookup, and there was what I needed. Andy Bold is distributed with Microsoft Home Publisher, part of the never used software that had come with my laptop.  A quick dig through my stack of CD-ROMs, and there it was, in the MHP\Fonts folder, an icon labeled AndyB.ttf.  I drag it over to my Windows\Fonts folder, and it automatically installs, and I can now print my cards like I want them. Unfortunately, I have a 2 year supply of them done with the other font.  Anyone want a card? Aw come on--please take a card.