Surgically Removing Substitute Fonts

Applies to: Word 2003, Word 2007

Cleanly removing a specific font from a document may be helpful when a user finds multiple fonts present under Office Orb | Word Options | Advanced | Show document content, "Font Substitution" and they only wish to remove a particular font (or a few) from the list. These approaches are also helpful when the 'Convert Permanently' option in 'Tools > Options', "Compatibility", "Font substitution" does not remove the font from the list.

There are two methods to do this, one that only works with Word 2003 and Word 2007, and one that is more general. Here are the steps you can use to "surgically" remove 'Times New Roman Bold' or any other font from a document:

For All Versions of Word (the RTF approach)

1. 'File > Save As', changing the 'Save as type:' (at the bottom of the dialog box) to "Rich Text Format (*.rtf)" from the drop-down list
2. Close the document (you can also exit Word if you wish, but it's not necessary)
   
3. Launch Notepad (or any other text-only editor), and open the RTF file you just created
   
4. Do a search ('Edit > Find' or [Ctrl][F]) for "MS Mincho" or "Times New Roman Bold", for example (without the quotes, of course)
   

   
   If that font is in the document, the search should bring you to a spot that looks something like this: {\f141\froman\fcharset0\fprq0{\*\panose 00000000000000000000}MS Mincho{\*\falt Times New Roman};} where "MS Mincho" is highlighted. Note how the font definition begins with "{\f" and some number, and ends with "};}". This is the entire font definition, and it will be very important to remove the whole thing, otherwise Word won't be able to re-open the document later. Don't be confused by "nested" pairs of braces (like "{\*\panose 00000000000000000000}"), or wrapped lines (where the "{\f" and "};}" aren't necessarily on the same line).

5. Once you have the entire font definition highlighted, you can delete it
   
6. Continue with 'Find Next' and highlight and delete until Notepad tells you it can't find any more
   
7. If you have any other fonts to get rid of, you can move the cursor back to the beginning of the document and repeat these steps, using those other font names in the search
   
8. When completely finished, exit from Notepad, saving changes when prompted
   
9. Re-open the now-edited RTF file in Word and save it once again as a .doc by doing a Save As and in the Save As Type dropdown choose "Word Document (*.doc)".
   
10. The Office Orb | Word Options | Advanced | Show document content, "Font Substitution" should now show no reference to the font(s) you edited out.

For Word 2003 and Word 2007 Users Only (the XML approach)

1. Save the document to an XML file in Word (select XML from the 'Save as type' dropdown).
   Close the document and open it in WordPad.
2. Press Ctrl-H (find and replace). If the problematic font is "Times New Roman Bold" put this in the "Find What" slot and put "Times New Roman" in the "Replace with:" field.
3. Save the result and reopen it in Word. After confirming that the font does not appear under Font Substitution, save it once again as a .doc (using File > Save As).

Conventions Used: Information regarding the Word 2007 features identified in this article use the following navigating conventions:

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