How to find where a font is used in powerpoint

by AJ George 

Last week I covered how to embed fonts in a PowerPoint presentation. On the flip side, what if you receive a presentation and have issues opening it because of an embedded font? This seems to be a relatively rare issue, and may not affect you (or the person receiving your presentation) if you used a fancy script font. The problem seems to be more related to the inclusion of certain fonts in the system, like Asian fonts that read the opposite direction. Sometimes, when sending these presentations off (particularly over-seas) there can be issues.

This issue was brought to my attention, so I began to explore and document how to find and delete embedded fonts. However, I found that the folks over at PPTools already have a pretty in-depth write up on this, including multiple solutions. Check out this link for what to do if your presentation contains Asian texts and formats that PowerPoint can't display.

Several great solutions are provided, but I would like to throw one more in the mix that might also work for you. If you know there is a font throwing a kink in the works but can't find where it is used within the presentation, try the following:

1. With your presentation opened in PowerPoint 2010, choose File > Save & Send > Create Handouts.
2. Click the Create Handouts button.  

This will send your presentation to MS Word. Since we are not actually interested in the handouts, you can choose anything from the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box and click OK. MS Word will open.


3. In Word 2010, press [Ctrl] [F] on your keyboard to bring up the Navigation pane.
4. Click the more arrow to the right of the Search Document field.





5. Select Advanced Find from the drop-down menu.

The Find and Replace dialog box will open.


6. At the bottom of the dialog box, click the Formatbutton and choose Font.
7. In the Font field, type the name of the offending font and click OK.

This will return you to the Find and Replace dialog box.


8. Leave the Find What field blank and click the Find Next button.

Word will find where the font was used so you can delete whatever is causing the hiccup back in your PowerPoint presentation.

The comments to this entry are closed.

You might come across a wonderful image or website that has a font type that seems perfect to be used for your next PowerPoint presentation or a graphic you are working on. The only problem is how to identify the font in the image! There are different methods and handy tools that can help you find font from image and the results often include the same and similar fonts that are closer to the selected typeface.

1. How to Figure Out Font in Picture Using Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop has a simple feature that allows identifying font from image. You can open an image, select the font in the image, and go to Type -> Match Font. This will display the matching fonts installed on your computer and the Adobe Fonts library that you can access via Adobe Creative Cloud.

2. How to use Online Font Finder Tools

There are numerous online font finder tools that perform a search similar to the reverse image search algorithm of search engines to find a matching font for the selected image.

Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is a web font generator and identifier that is capable of identifying fonts from images. You can highlight the areas with text in uploaded images to quickly identify matching fonts. Font Squirrel provides a list of both free and paid fonts that match your selected typeface in the image.

WhatTheFont

WhatTheFont is a free web service where you can instantly upload an image, select text from image, and find a font from your selected image. WhatTheFont’s algorithms searches through a collection consisting of as many as 133,000 font styles to provide end-users with the best possible match for their selected text. The website uses a deep learning mechanism to try to identify the font that best resembles the one in the picture. Even if it’s not the exact font, you will get results quite close to the original typeface.

Fount

Fount is a font identification tool that can select a font from any section of a website to identify what typeface is used for the selected text. To use Fount, drag the bookmarklet from the Fount website to the bookmarks bar. Once done, go to any website, click the bookmarlet and select text to identify the typeface.

Fonts Ninja

If you want a simple tool that can help you identify fonts on the fly, you can use a font finder Chrome extension by the name of Fonts Ninja. The extension can help you identify fonts from within the Chrome browser. Furthermore, it also enables bookmarking fonts, and getting the properties for the CSS of the website. Fonts Ninja also has a desktop application that comes with the ability to identify over 3000 fonts and instantly try them in a design software.

3. How to Use Quora Typeface Identification

Quora is a user-driven platform to find answers to questions with the help of the Quora community. Like numerous other topics, Quora has a Typeface Identification category where you can upload an image to seek help in identifying the font.

Final Words

While reverse image search engines like TinEye, Bing Image, or Google Images have come a long way in identifying images via reverse image search, font finders lag a little behind in accurately identifying fonts. Perhaps this is because many fonts are quite similar and might even be virtually the same in style. However, by using the methods mentioned above, you can identify at least a close match for your desired typeface, if not the exact font. You might notice that tools that provide font search by picture are quick to identify commonly used fonts, as compared to rare ones. This is perhaps due to the limitations associated with the number and type of fonts the search engine can sift through to provide end-users with a close match.

Where are fonts found in PowerPoint?

Can you search text in PowerPoint?