Custom fonts are a great way to personalize a document, presentation or report generated by Conga Composer. After all, presentation style is crucially important for many use cases involving Conga Composer, and typography plays a big role in the process of formatting a template. There are a few required configuration steps in order for Composer to play nicely with a custom font, so let’s dig right in and see how it’s done.
There are two ways to use custom fonts with Conga Composer – you can send our support team the font file, or you can embed the font directly in your template. The first approach is typically the best long-term solution, but the following decision tree will help you decide the best method of using a custom font:
1) How to Send Conga the Font File
As you can see, sending our team your custom font file to be uploaded to the Conga servers is almost always the best option. Fonts are generally deployed the same day, after which they become available for use with any type of Microsoft Office template (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) that you use going forward. You also avoid the need to embed the font in your template, which can unnecessarily increase file size and slow down the merge process.
You can send our support team your custom font file by submitting a case on our website. Just make sure that you attach the .TTF or .OTF file(s) that you want to use in your template(s), as well as your 15-character Salesforce Org ID. If you’re not sure how to find your Salesforce Org ID, this will help point you in the right direction.
2) How to Embed the Font in Your Template
The first step to using a custom font on your local computer is to install the font file. On a Windows PC, this is achieved with a very simple right-click action as shown below:
Once a font has been installed on your local computer, it will be available for use in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint:
At this point, applications on your computer have full access to the custom font because it’s installed locally. But what about the Conga servers that diligently merge documents 24 hours per day? Unfortunately, they have no access to the custom font at this point – it only exists locally on your machine. In order for the custom font to be preserved when you merge a file with Conga Composer, you’ll need to embed the font in your template.
To embed the font in your template, open your template file in the appropriate Microsoft Office application (Word, Excel or PowerPoint). Then, navigate to File->Options->Save and find the option at the bottom of the dialog to Embed fonts in the file, as shown below:
I highly recommend using the settings applied in the above screenshot. Choosing to embed only the characters used in the document doesn’t guarantee that all the characters in your output file will merge successfully, and embedding common system fonts will result in an unnecessarily large file size.
Once that’s done, just save your template and you’ll be ready to merge!
In summary, it’s almost always best to simply send our team the custom font file, but embedding a font is a good way to test a solution while you’re in the midst of creating a template. See you next time!