How to Install Semi-bold and Other Font Variations for Word/PowerPoint

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If Microsoft Word and PowerPoint don’t recognize fonts styles other than bold or italic even if other styles are installed, there is a hack.

I found the perfect font to use for titles in a presentation, Raleway Semi-bold. I installed it and when I went back to PowerPoint, I had two options: bold and italic. So, where’s semi-bold? A quick search found that it’s a MS-Office problem. A hack around it was to remove all other variations of the bold font, except for the semi-bold. This would be great unless I wanted to use the actual bold font. My solution was to rename the Semi-Bold Raleway font and install it as a “new” font. 

Installing Font Variations for Word/PowerPoint

1. Install FontForge.

FontForge is an open source font editor. 

2. Using FontForge, Rename Semi-Bold Raleway

For ease, create a directory on the desktop called Raleway Tracks. In this directory, put a copy of Raleway-SemiBold.ttf.

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Navigate to the desktop folder and open Raleway-SemiBold.ttf.

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This opens the main font editor window.

From the menu bar, select Element > Font Info…

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Under PS Names, change:

Fontname: Tracks-SemiBold.

Family Name: Tracks

Name For Humans: Tracks SemiBold

Click [OK].

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Now, you’re going to get a little popup to change the UniqueID. Go ahead and [Change].

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Back in the main window, select File > Generate Fonts…

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Press [Generate].

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Ignore the error message. Press [Generate].

If everything went right, you should now have a “new” font called Tracks-SemiBold.tff in the Raleway Tracks directory.

3. Install Tracks-SemiBold Font.

Double click on the .tff file and press [Install].

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Now, you have Raleway-SemiBold.tff to use whenever your little heart desires… except it’s named Tracks.

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