I am completely ignorant of the topic and appreciate any advice I can get. Sorry for silly questions in advance. I am not a designer.
Once in a while, I get Microsoft Word documents with fonts that don't come with MS Office (Windows). For example, a get AGaramond-Pro and MyriadPro. One of them is part of Adobe's "Standard Install Set 1" and the other part of "Standard Install Set 2." I don't have these on my machine (or at least in Word). In these documents, the fonts are shown as they were created (such as "AGaramondPro-Regular") but I think what I see on the screen is not the same font but some kind of substitution (some TTF). Needless to say, when I try to edit and send the document back, it all looks different.
1. I guess I need to get these fonts, but maybe they are already on my computer or can be taken from some other application (such as simple Adobe Acrobat). I think these are not true type fonts, which might be the reason for my problem. I am also concerned that if I do manage to install or activate these fonts, there would be problems if I send the document to somebody like me, who would not see them on the screen the same way or be able to print them the same way. (I can send a PDF with the fonts embedded, but even this is problematic since the "Embed OpenTypes fonts" option in Adobe Acrobat is gray and does not allow me to put a checkmark there. Maybe it means they are embedded automatically, or maybe it means it cannot be done.)
2. I tried, as a test, taking just one OpenType font from a friend (who is equally ignorant of these matters) to see if it would work on my computer. I installed it in Windows and it showed up as an OTF in the list of Windows font. It immediately appeared in Word, but it looked nothing like it was supposed to (was barely legible). As another test, I created a PDF out of this Word document. I checked "Embed all fonts" but the "Embed OpenType fonts" option was gray and I couldn't click on it. In the PDF, the font was substituted with something completely different and in some cases spaces between letters in the words appeared. So it didn't work.
3. I don't want to buy the whole Font Folio since I only need a few basic fonts. (They seem to come with some much cheaper Adobe products.) What's worse, I am not sure even buying the whole library would work since I want to use the fonts in Word rather than in Adobe applications.
4. The main thing I want to do is to make changes to the document I get not without messing up the design/layout. My problem, however, starts even before that, since when I open the Word document it already looks different from what I see in the PDF version.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.