Thai font · COMMERCIAL

CordiaUPC

คอร์เดียยูพีซี

By Narongsak Chaiwong

Typography & Licensing Specialist, ThaiGraph · July 16, 2026 · Updated August 22, 2026

Information verified as of August 2026

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What CordiaUPC is

CordiaUPC (คอร์เดียยูพีซี) is the geometric looped Thai sans that Microsoft bundles with Windows and Office, designed by Unity Progress Corp in 1992. Microsoft’s own description is unusually specific for a system font: a “geometric” design “with simple, straight strokes combined with round curves”, with “no contrast between thick and thin strokes, even in the loops (small circles at the extremes of some letters)”, suitable for body text with a “modern, futuristic appearance”.

Settle one thing before the rest. If the font your document actually names is the New cut rather than the UPC cut, the page you want is Cordia New; this page covers the UPC cut only. The distinction matters far less than it looks, and the next section explains why.

For a generation of Thai office workers this was never a choice. It arrived with the operating system, became the default in templates, and those templates outlived the machines. The rest of the set is catalogued under Windows and Office Thai fonts.

CordiaUPC and the New cut are the same font data

Microsoft says it in writing on the CordiaUPC page itself: “Cordia New is a newer version of the same typeface, with small adjustments.” On current Windows, that difference has been reduced to nothing — both names now come out of one file. The Windows 11 font list gives all four CordiaUPC styles and all four New-cut styles the same file, Cordia.ttc, at the same version, 5.06.

We opened the file rather than assume. Cordia.ttc on Windows 11 is a TrueType Collection of eight faces, four under each family name. For every matching style, the two faces point at the identical byte ranges for the glyph outlines (glyf, loca), the advance widths (hmtx), the character map (cmap), the vertical metrics (hhea, OS/2) and the OpenType layout tables (GSUB, GPOS, GDEF). The only tables that differ are name, which carries the family name, and the modified timestamp in head. Both report 4096 units per em, 362 glyphs, and in Regular an ascender of 3658 against a descender of −1040.

Michael S. Kaplan, then a Microsoft internationalization engineer, reached the same conclusion in 2007 without the file dump. He listed “Cordia New ≈ Cordia UPC” among Windows’ duplicate families and wrote: “The only difference I can see between the UPC and the New versions is the name.”

The consequence for anyone choosing between them: there is nothing to choose. They install together, they render identically, and switching a paragraph from one to the other changes the name stored in the document and not one line break.

Two limits on that. It describes the file Windows ships today, not the version 2.20 that shipped with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 — we have not inspected those binaries and claim nothing about them. And it says nothing about third-party files carrying these names, which cannot be audited from here.

Where Cordiau.ttf went

Microsoft’s CordiaUPC page still lists four separate file names — Cordiau.ttf, Cordiaub.ttf, Cordiauz.ttf and Cordiaui.ttf — while its Windows 11 font list gives Cordia.ttc for the same four styles. On a current Windows 11 machine the collection is what is actually installed; no Cordiau.ttf was present when we checked.

This trips up anyone copying fonts between machines by dragging files. People go looking for four .ttf files that are not there and conclude the font is missing. It is not missing; it is inside a collection, together with the New cut.

Most of the family did keep the one-file-per-style scheme. Microsoft’s Windows 11 list ships DilleniaUPC as Upcdl.ttf, EucrosiaUPC as Upcel.ttf, FreesiaUPC as Upcfl.ttf, IrisUPC as Upcil.ttf, JasmineUPC as Upcjl.ttf, KodchiangUPC as Upckl.ttf and LilyUPC as Upcll.ttf. Cordia and Browallia are the two exceptions — see DilleniaUPC for the older pattern.

What “UPC” stands for

Microsoft’s CordiaUPC page names the designer as “Unity Progress Corp” — the initials the UPC suffix matches. Kaplan’s 2007 post gives the licensor in a third form, “Unity Progress Co., Ltd.”

We stop short of presenting the expansion as documented fact. No Microsoft page we could find writes the abbreviation out in full. The company name sits in Microsoft’s own sentence, every UPC-suffixed Thai family in Windows carries the same 1992 Unity Progress copyright, and the reading is a strong one — but it is a reading rather than a quotation, and this site marks that line.

The suffix is a family marker, nothing technical. It runs across the whole Microsoft Thai set: BrowalliaUPC, DilleniaUPC, EucrosiaUPC, FreesiaUPC, IrisUPC, JasmineUPC, KodchiangUPC and LilyUPC.

Every CordiaUPC style

Microsoft is explicit: “It has two weights, Regular and Bold, with complementary slanted (italic) styles for each.” Four styles, two real weights. No Light, no Medium, no Black, no variable version.

The PostScript names matter in prepress. A PDF reports the font it wants by PostScript name, so if a print house says a file is asking for CordiaUPC-Bold, that is the Bold style of this family and nothing else.

One thing to expect from CordiaUPC Bold specifically. Because the design carries, in Microsoft’s words, “no contrast between thick and thin strokes, even in the loops”, the bold cut thickens uniformly instead of tapering. The loops on ก, ถ and ภ are the first thing to close up at small sizes on a laser printer. For Thai headings that stay open at weight, Sarabun offers a far wider range than two.

The family covers Thai and Latin — code pages 1874 Thai and 1252 Latin — but Microsoft describes the Latin set as capitals and lowercase for the alphabet, which is a supporting role, not a lead one. Compare it against your own bilingual copy in the font tester.

Is CordiaUPC free?

It is free in the sense that it is covered by the Windows or Office licence you already hold. It is not free in the open-licence sense, and there is nothing to buy. Microsoft’s Download row reads, in full: “N/A – Exclusively included with Microsoft products and services where applicable.”

Ordinary commercial work on a licensed machine sits inside that: quotations, reports, print layouts, PDF export. Outside it are three things — redistributing the font files, embedding the font in non-Microsoft products or applications, and self-hosting it as a webfont. Each needs separate terms through Microsoft’s enterprise licensing route.

Aggregator sites offering Cordiau.ttf are distributing files extracted from Windows installations. Microsoft has never published this font as a standalone download, so nothing licenses those copies. The Thai font licensing guide sets out how bundled system fonts differ from OFL faces.

How to get CordiaUPC without paying for it

There is no price and no purchase. On Windows 10 and 11 it arrives through an optional feature called Thai Supplemental Fonts, which installs fourteen Thai families in a single action — CordiaUPC among them.

Microsoft moved these families out of the default install to reduce the operating system footprint, improve performance and optimize disk space usage. After a fresh install or an upgrade, in Microsoft’s words, “optional fonts aren’t enabled by default” — that, not a corrupted profile, is why a new Windows 11 machine has no CordiaUPC. Microsoft also states the removal is a permanent change in behaviour that will remain in future releases.

Two routes, both straight from Microsoft’s documentation:

• Optional features. Run ms-settings:optionalfeatures, choose View features next to Add an optional feature, tick Thai Supplemental Fonts, then Next and Add. On Windows 10 the pane is System → Optional features and the button is + Add a feature.
• Add Thai as a language. Run ms-settings:regionlanguage, add Thai under Preferred languages and pick the language features you want. This brings the fonts plus full Thai language support.

Both install through Windows Update, so the device must be online. Where an organisation blocks Windows Update the feature will not install, and it needs an exception or a Features on Demand deployment instead.

Note what you cannot do: install the UPC cut on its own. The optional feature delivers Cordia.ttc, and both family names appear in the font menu together.

What happens when CordiaUPC is substituted

Swapping it for the New cut on a current Windows machine changes nothing measurable — same outlines, same widths, same line metrics. Swapping it for a genuinely different family is what wrecks a layout.

Microsoft states the second case without hedging: “In most cases, font substitution causes the text to flow differently. Line breaks, column breaks, page breaks, line spacing, and hyphenation will likely change, even if the substitute font is similar to the missing font.” When a font is neither installed nor embedded, Windows supplies a default substitute automatically — nobody asks you which one.

That is why a Thai document can look correct in the office and wrong at the print house. The cause is not the two names and not the printer; it is the file arriving on a machine that has neither cut, usually a Mac, a phone, or a Linux print server. Three things follow:

• A document that names CordiaUPC names it permanently. The file records a typeface name, not the typeface. Nothing you do in your own font menu changes what an old file asks for.
• Page counts move. Reflowed line breaks cascade, so a substituted document can gain or lose pages — a real problem for numbered clauses, tables and fixed forms.
• Embedding is the fix Microsoft names. Its Office guidance is to embed fonts to preserve the layout when sharing with people on other versions. That protects the file; it does not hand the recipient a licence to use the font in their own work.

If the document has to survive leaving Windows, set it in an open-licensed Thai sans from the start instead of betting on a system font being installed.

Why you still have UPC files in 2026

Because Windows still ships them, Office still lists them, and Thai templates written in the 1990s are still in daily use. All three at once, each producing a different kind of user.

• The optional feature. CordiaUPC is one of the fourteen families in the current Thai Supplemental Fonts feature on Windows 10 and 11. Anyone who has added Thai to a Windows machine has it.
• Office. The family is on Microsoft’s cloud fonts list for Office applications, which is why a document can render correctly in a current Office app on a machine with nothing installed locally.
• Inherited documents. Microsoft’s product table for this font starts at Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 at font version 2.20. Forms, letterheads and university templates from that era still specify the UPC name, and every copy since has carried it forward.

None of that recommends it for new design work. It makes it the correct choice for old documents, which is a different job entirely.

Name variants and spellings

All of these point at the same typeface:

• CordiaUPC — the family name Microsoft publishes, one word
• Cordia UPC — the spaced form
• cordiaupc — the lower-case form typed into a search box
• คอร์เดียยูพีซี — the Thai transliteration of the full name
• คอร์เดีย — the Thai form of Cordia alone; on a Windows machine it means this family or its New sibling
• Cordiau.ttf, Cordiaub.ttf, Cordiauz.ttf, Cordiaui.ttf — the file names Microsoft’s documentation still lists
• CordiaUPC-Bold, CordiaUPC-Italic, CordiaUPC-BoldItalic — the PostScript names, as reported by PDF and prepress tools

One correction worth making plainly. There is no font called “Cordia New UPC”. Microsoft publishes two separate family names and neither combines the suffixes. Anyone searching that phrase is reading a font menu that lists both names next to each other as if it were one entry. On a current Windows machine either name sets the same text identically.

Free alternatives to CordiaUPC

If the work has to live on the web, go to a supplier, or open on a Mac, start from an open-licensed looped Thai sans instead of trying to make a bundled system font portable.

• Sarabun — looped Thai sans under the SIL Open Font License, free to embed and free for commercial use, with a far wider weight range than two. The closest replacement in the document-body role.
• Noto Sans Thai Looped — OFL, with traditional circular loops and consistent rendering across platforms. Strong when Thai and English share a sentence.
• IBM Plex Sans Thai Looped — another OFL option, drawn as a matched Thai-Latin pair from the start, which helps when both scripts have to hold the same tone.
• The full free Thai font list — every family with its licence checked individually.

A note on Leelawadee: it installs in the same Thai Supplemental Fonts feature, so it substitutes cleanly on a Windows machine, but it sits under the same bundled system licence rather than an open one. It does not solve the web or file-handoff problem.

The same caveat applies to every option here — none is a metric-compatible twin, so dropping one into a layout already set in CordiaUPC will move the line breaks, for exactly the reason Microsoft gives above. Pick the replacement before the layout is built. Compare them in the font tester, or browse Thai sans-serif fonts and the full fonts directory.

Licensing

CordiaUPC is proprietary. The copyright line reads ”© 1992 Unity Progress. Portions © 2004 The Monotype Corporation. Portions © 2019 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.” Usage rights attach to the Windows or Office licence on the machine. There is no standalone sale, no public webfont licence, and no redistribution right.

One documentation detail for anyone chasing the vendor of record: Microsoft’s CordiaUPC page leaves the Font vendor row blank, while the same row on its page for the New cut is filled in. The copyright lines are identical, so we read the blank as an omission rather than a different rights position — and we say so rather than assert it.

Organisations needing more than the bundled scope — embedding in shipped software, server installation, or webfont use — must negotiate through the enterprise route Microsoft links from the CordiaUPC documentation. For work that should not involve licence negotiation at all, Sarabun and Noto Sans Thai Looped deliver comparable looped Thai character under the SIL Open Font License with no conditions attached. The Thai typography guide covers where this looped tradition sits against the loopless families now dominant in Thai branding.

Information verified as of August 2026