Tech talk terror

I was working in a Microsoft Word document typing something up and was trying to make it a little more "creatively pretty". The original font styles that Word offered were all boring to me, so I turned to my sister--the creative genius--for help. She tells me to go to www.dafont.com for some new font styles. I think, "Wow! How neat!"

Sure enough this website offers tons and tons of new fonts and you're able to download them for free to your computer! Sounded good to me! I found a couple I liked, clicked the "download" button, and waited. Nothing appeared in my Word font box. Hmm... Now I'm not a very techy person, so back to my sister I went. I explained my computer problem and that I couldn't figure out how to download the new font. She said, "I did it pretty easily..." go figure. This from the person who always made straights A's in school. Then she told me to click on the download box. More heavy sighs from me. Did I mention that I'm not very computer-techy?

I went back and tried again. I managed to save the new font to my computer. Great! Progress! I opened it and sure enough, there was the new font style, but no obvious way for me to type with it. Mental head scratching... I wrote a new email to my sister, and this was her reply:

"You need to unzip it and install it. What unzip program are you using? Winzip? Then are you using Vista or XP? With Vista you right click and then click "install". With XP you need to copy and paste the file into C: Windows/fonts/".

I swear I read that passage fourteen times. I was just kind of blankly staring at my screen. Was this English? Did I bump a button that automatically changed her speech to a foreign language? What's an XP... or a Vista? How do you, or what do you, "unzip"? I know files can be opened, but some have zippers?? I thought the next thing she's going to tell me is that something needs to be "unbuttoned" or "put on a hanger" or "laid out to dry". I was beyond lost...

I randomly started pushing buttons and copying and pasting the darn font file to every windows folder I found. Finally, after sweating pretty profusely, I found the Windows Font folder. It was hiding between other files like "dell", "media", and "WinSxS". Who knew what they were for, as long as I found the correct folder I was happy. I dabbed my underarms and continued working. I finally managed to copy and paste and get the new font in the correct place!

I was thrilled! Mentally I was exhausted, physically I was a headachy-sweaty mess, but emotionally I was excited to have learned a new, cool techy move! Thanks to my lovely Sis for all her help, but I think next time I'll look up "Downloading New Fonts For Dummies" and see if it's written in English...