Install font for all PC Users with MECM?

Question

Hello all - I have an open type font thisfont.otf that our company bought and I want to install it for all Windows users on each of our PCs. We want this to happen in the background without any user intervention or inconvenience. Ideally avoid reboots or logging out the user for the change to go into effect. In looking online, many of the results are outdated (before Windows 10 1809) or require a reboot/log out. (For example the top hit when googling this was a Prajwal Desai article written for SCCM 2012 and the comments seem like it's no longer working.)

Anyone have any experience in something like this?

Answer 1

@net1994

Take a look at this article and package the script plus font files into SCCM/Intune. The registry key is what's needed post-1809:

Automating the Deployment of Windows 10 Fonts

Please upvote and accept this thread as answered if it's helpful, thanks!

Answer 2

This is what worked: https://byteben.com/bb/how-to-deploy-fonts-with-memcm/?unapproved=7052&moderation-hash=ba65456bea86ad407c8a5b671123e0c4#comment-7052

It was pure powershell. My OTF font file is copied into C:\Windows\Fonts and then added to the HKLM registry key to make it available to all users. No log out or reboot was needed. I will test more tomorrow. Make sure the font shows up properly in different programs. But today I had Wordpad open before the install and after it was installed, I could find the font in the WordPad font drop down menu without having to close it and reopen. Real time.

One gotcha (as others noted) was copying/pasting the command line for the script into your SCCM/MECM console. Doing this from the web page distorted the characters in the command line and the powershell will fail on the PC. I manually typed it in and then it worked great.

There is also a uninstall PS script. However if a user has an app open that uses the font, the removal will fail.

Answer 3

Hi @net1994 ,
1, I have done some research on this issue, we can try to specie the Logon requirement as Only when no user is logged on. This step is performed in step 13 in the article you provided.
The screenshot for your reference:

2, If the above steps do not solve your problem, we may need to make some changes to the script. I will do some search and test. If I have any progress, I will be sharing for you.

Thank you for your time and patience!

Best regards,
Cherry