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How can I stop Times New Roman from being a default font?

Posted By : of Data Doctors on May 18, 2007

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How can I stop Times New Roman from being a default font? I want my default font to be Arial... it works for MS Mail, but if I want to print anything else it always comes up as Times New Roman.

-David

This question was answered on May 18, 2007. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Since you did not state what program you are trying to print from, I will cover some of the more common applications.

When it comes to the Internet, the font that you see displayed in your browser (or that prints through the browser) is only changeable if the author of the site did not "hard code" the font specifications into the page you are viewing.

Most commercial websites totally control the font (and the font size) in order to maintain the look and feel that they desire, so you may be out of luck if this is what you are trying to do.

Most websites incorporate “tables” that hold text and images of a specific size If they allow you to change the font type or size, the tables will be thrown out of whack, causing the entire site to render improperly.

If you want to try changing the default font in Internet Explorer, click on the Tools menu, then on Internet Options Under the ‘General’ tab, look towards the bottom of the Options for the Fonts button.

If you are using Firefox, click on the Tools menu, then on Options In the General options, click on the Fonts & Colors button to make the desired changes.

A quick test of whether the webmaster is controlling the text on a site is to try changing the font size In IE, click on View then on Text Size and select the ‘Largest’ option For those with a scroll-wheel on their mouse, you can do the same thing by holding down the CTRL button and scrolling up and down with the wheel on the mouse

If nothing changes, you know that the webmaster has hard coded the font specifications into the page.

Not every site that allows you to change the font size will allow you to change the font type from the browser settings Google is a good example of that; you can change the font size, but you can not change the actual font

If you are trying to change the default font in Microsoft Word, click on the Format menu, then on Font Select Arial, then click the Default button at the bottom of the window which will change it for every new document from that point forward.

In Excel, click on the Tools menu then on Options and then click on the General tab In the middle of this window, look for the ‘Standard Font:’ option and change it to your desired font.

In Outlook Express, you can change the font used for displaying messages or composing messages, separately Click on the Tools menu, then on Options and select either the Read tab or the Compose tab to make the desired changes.

There are many versions of each of the programs that I have mentioned, so if you have an older version the exact steps may be different.

The easiest way to learn how to change the default font in any program is click on the Help menu and search the contents for “default font”.

If the Help menus don’t have any reference to setting the fonts, it may not be an option in that program.

Another way to control how text prints is to highlight the text from the original source (website, PDF, etc.) hit CTRL-C (which copies it to the invisible clipboard) then paste it (CTRL-V) into a blank Word document.

You can then reformat the content, remove any image that you don’t want to print (which also saves ink!) and change the font to the type and size of your liking.

About the author

Posted by of Data Doctors on May 18, 2007

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