How to Install Microsoft Fonts in Linux Office Suites

You can also use Microsoft’s fonts to create documents of your own, so you can compose a document in Calibri or Times New Roman and save it as a DOCX or DOC file for maximum compatibility with Office.

Install Microsoft’s TrueType Core fonts:

• Open a terminal
• Now click on Ubuntu icon
• Next you need to search for Terminal
• Now you have to click the terminal shortcut
• Next you have to type, “sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts – installer”
• Next type your password
• Now you need to press Enter
• Now you have to click on OK button
• This would install the fonts.

Install Microsoft’s ClearType fonts:

Microsoft added a group of new “ClearType Fonts” to Windows with Windows Vista and Office 2007. These fonts are named Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, and Consolas.

Microsoft extracts the six ClearType fonts, and installs them on your Linux system. The fastest, easiest way to do this is with a few terminal commands. If you haven’t yet installed the TrueType core fonts, you’ll need to run the sudo apt-get install cabextract command to install the cabextract utility on your system. If you installed the Microsoft core fonts using the command above, this should already be installed.

Next, type mkdir .fonts and press Enter to create the fonts directory the script requires. The script will complain that you don’t have a .fonts directory if you don’t do this first.

Next, copy-and-paste or type the “wget -qO- http://plasmasturm.org/code/vistafonts-installer/vistafonts-installer | bash” command into the terminal and press Enter. This command downloads the VistaFonts-Installer script and runs it.

Install Tahoma, Segoe UI, and other fonts:

Tahoma isn’t included with the TrueType core fonts package, while Segoe UI and other newer Windows fonts aren’t included with the ClearType Fonts package.

If you have a Windows system lying around, these fonts are fairly easy to install. For example, let’s say you’re dual-booting Ubuntu Linux and Windows. You’ll find your Windows partition in Ubuntu’s file manager. Click the Windows drive in the sidebar to access it. Navigate to the WindowsFonts directory and you’ll see all the fonts installed on your Windows PC, including the fonts that came with it. Double-click a font and click the Install button to install it for your user account. You can use this trick to quickly install any other Windows fonts you want, including Tahoma and Segoe UI.

Configure LibreOffice or OpenOffice:

Whether your Linux distribution uses LibreOffice or OpenOffice, configuring your office suite of choice to work with these fonts is easy. If you’ve installed them using any of the instructions above, they’ll already be available to use. If either office suite was open as you installed the fonts, you may have to first close the office suite and re-open it. The fonts will appear as options in the Fonts dropdown box, so you can use them like any other font.

Open a Microsoft Office document created using these fonts and LibreOffice or OpenOffice will automatically use the appropriate fonts. They’ll display the document as it was intended to look, Microsoft fonts and all.

If you’d like to change your default fonts for new documents, click Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer or OpenOffice Writer > Basic Fonts (Western). Your office suite of choice will use Microsoft’s fonts as the default fonts in future documents if you choose them here.