Helvetica font (Office 2003)

[dianne18]

I am working on a document created using helvetica. Even though the font selection box recognises and names this font, I have not got it among my Office 2003 collection. Can I obtain the helvetica font online?
Many thanks
Dianne

[WendellB]

You probably have a font substitution going on - Helvetica is very similar to Arial and is the usual substitution choice. Helvetica originally came from the Adobe and Mac world, and was common in older documents from that environment. You could try searching for a downloadable True Type version of Helvetica on the web, but I imagine you would have to pay for it. In the mean time, I think you will find that the Arial font substitution will give you nearly identical formatting on documents.

[JohnGray]

Dianne

Arial was created to be a very close approximation to Helvetica, which was heavily copyrighted. Unless you examine very closely the same text in both fonts it is not easy to spot differences, certainly major ones.

[LegareColeman]

You can buy it from Adobe Here . However, the Arial font that comes with Windows is almost identical.

[jscher2000]

<P ID="edit" class=small>(Edited by jscher2000 on 24-Jan-04 14:03. The little icons on the Font drop-down show the "source" of the font, more or less.)</P>If the person who created the document had an M series LaserJet (e.g., 4M or 5M) or one of the newer ones that contains PostScript fonts, they probably had Helvetica on their font list as a printer font at the time they created the document. For the sake of portability, it's safer to use TrueType fonts, but... portability isn't always the first concern.

If you check the font substitution table under Tools>Options...>Compatibility, you may find that Word automatically has associated Helvetica with Arial. If it didn't, that certainly would be the best match. (Or, I guess Univers, if your printer has that one instead.)

[dianne18]

Thanks to all who have been so informative. Have never had to delve into fonts before, and was very curious as to why the many style variations available for helvetica were visible in the dropdown style box ,despite not being included in Word fonts.Have also never peered into the compatability section before. The font substitution was set at "default" which is 'helvetica'. See attachment.
I was unable to view your attachment (the 'blank box with the red cross' syndrome).

[jscher2000]

Dianne, the attachment is a PNG graphic file, which should be viewable on recent versions of Windows. I regret any incompatibility, but if I use any other format, there is a terrible quality vs. size tradeoff...