Beginning with Office 2007 and Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced six new TrueType fonts. They are: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel. If you don’t have these fonts and open a document that uses them, it may not display properly. If the document is an Adobe PDF, you may, under some circumstances, see an unintelligible series of dots, accompanied by a message that one or more fonts is missing.

Fortunately, you don’t have to upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office, or move to Vista or Windows 7, to get the new fonts.

If you are running Windows XP or Windows 2000, but not any Office 2007 components, the easiest solution is to download and install PowerPoint Viewer 2007. The download is free and requires no validation checks. Installing the PowerPoint Viewer installs the new fonts as well. Simple.

And by the way . . .

Technically, this is a license violation but, if you want just the fonts without the PowerPoint Viewer, there is a way to do this. Here’s the general procedure:

1. The PowerPointViewer.exe executable is actually an archive. Extract the contents to a new folder someplace convenient. 7-Zip and PeaZip can do this, as can the venerable, but non-free, WinZip.
2. Take a look at the files you’ve just extracted and you’ll see yet another archive named ppviewer.cab, which contains the font files. Extract its contents.
3. Use the Windows Control Panel “Fonts” applet to install the new fonts from wherever you placed the contents of ppviewer.cab. (Choose the “Install New Font…” option from the the “Fonts” applet’s File menu.) Make sure the “Copy fonts to Fonts folder” option is checked.

Running Linux? See this article.