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Harry Penny asked how to install a font that he downloaded from a Web site to his Desktop.

Well, first let’s talk about fonts in general. They are kept in a folder named Fonts, which can be accessed by clicking Start>Control Panel and double-clicking Fonts. Doing so will display dozens, if not hundreds, of fonts listed alphabetically. Double-click any font’s icon to see what the actual alphabet style looks like.

If you would like to see what a font looks like in multiple sizes, a free program called "Font Explorer" is available from www.karenware.com.

Most of us have more fonts than we know what to do with — but to graphic arts companies they are a marvelous resource that not too many years ago had to be purchased at fairly lofty prices. My screen-printing business of 40 years spent thousands to have what now comes free with various computer programs.

If you need a font you don’t already have, do a Web search for the font’s name, or type something like "free fonts" into a Search box. You’ll find plenty of sites that include instructions for downloading fonts to your computer.

If a friend wants a special font you have, you can send it to him/her as an email attachment. The easiest way to do this is to locate the item in your Fonts folder and drag it onto your Desktop. This will make a copy of the font, leaving the original in place.

Next, right-click the font’s icon and choose Send To>Mail Recipient. This will open your email program and display a blank outbound message with the font attached. Just fill in the blanks and send it.

The email recipient will be able to copy the attachment by right-clicking it and choosing "Save As," whereupon the font will most likely be sent to his/her My Documents folder.

Back to Harry’s question, the recipient would open his/her Fonts folder and click on File>Install New Font. An "Add Font" dialogue box will appear that allows the recipient to browse to the font’s location, whereupon a double-click will install it.

By the way, right-clicking just about any kind of a file (such as a photo, a video or an MP3) and choosing Send To>Mail Recipient is probably the easiest way of attaching an item to an outgoing message.

However, all email recipients are admonished to be suspicious of incoming attachments and not open them without being sure who sent them and why. Emailing infected attachments is still the most common way of distributing computer viruses.

A particularly insidious virus is one which steals your email address and password, along with all the names in your Address Book. It then sends out likely ludicrous emails to your friends and relatives that appear to be from you. If this has happened, try to change your password. If this doesn’t work you may need to completely cancel the infected email account and start over with a new one.