Change the default font in Word

To use your favorite font in Word all the time, set it as the default.

Go to Home, and then select the Font Dialog Box Launcher .

Select the font and size you want to use.

Select Set As Default.

Select one of the following:

This document only

All documents based on the Normal template.

Select OK twice.

If the default font setting doesn’t persist

Sometimes, a company’s permission settings or some add-ins change the default font back to the original font. If that’s happening, here are some things to try.

In the Search box, type Normal.dotm and select Search.

Right-click Normal.dotm, and select Properties.

On the General tab, make sure Read-only isn’t checked. If it’s checked, uncheck it.

Select the Security tab. Under Group or user names, select your name, and then make sure you have Write permission in the Permissions box.

If you aren’t able to uncheck the Read-only box or if you don’t have Write permission, contact the person who’s in charge of your company’s computer systems.

If you have Write permissions and the default font setting still doesn’t stick, you might have to turn off Word add-ins and change the default font setting. Here’s how:

Select File > Options > Add-Ins.

In the Add-ins box, find one of the add-ins you want to turn off and note the add-in type listed in the Type column.

Select that add-in type in the Manage list, and select Go.

Uncheck the boxes for the add-ins you want to turn off, and select OK.

Repeat steps 1-4 for other types of add-ins.

After you change the default font, turn on the add-ins.

Select File > Options > Add-Ins.

Select an Add-in type in the Manage list, and select Go.

Check the boxes for the add-ins you want to turn on, and select OK.

Repeat steps 1-3 for the other types of add-ins you want to turn on.

Note: You don’t have to turn off the Document Inspector type add-ins.

To use your favorite font in Word all the time, set it as the default.

Go to Format > Font > Font.

You can also press and hold + D to open the Font dialog box.

Select the font and size you want to use.

Select Default, and then select Yes.

If the default font setting doesn’t persist

Sometimes, a company’s permission settings change the default font back to the original font. If that’s happening, try this:

Open Finder, and in the Search box, type Normal.dotm.

On the File menu, select Get Info. Or, press and hold + I.

Select General, and make sure Locked is unchecked. If it’s checked, uncheck it.

Select Sharing & Permissions, and next to your name, make sure you have Read & Write permission under Privilege.

If you aren’t able to uncheck the Locked box or if you don’t have Read & Write permission, contact the person who’s in charge of your company’s computer systems.

Embed fonts in documents or presentations

Some Office apps let you embed fonts in your documents. That way, if you share your document with someone else who doesn’t have the same fonts installed that you do, the fonts, layout, and styling of the document won’t change, and special characters won’t turn into meaningless rectangles.

In recent years we’ve moved our Office fonts to the cloud, so they’re available to all Office subscribers with Internet access and there’s no need to embed them. Font embedding is still useful when using non-standard fonts, or if you expect the presentation to be edited or viewed offline by someone else.

Embed fonts in Word or PowerPoint

Click the File tab and then click Options (it’s near the bottom left corner of the window).

In the left column, select the Save tab.

At the bottom, under Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation, select the Embed fonts in the file check box.

Options to turn on font embedding for your file»>

Selecting Embed only the characters used in the presentation reduces the file size but limits editing of the file using the same font. Leaving that check box blank increases the file size, but is best for allowing others to edit the document and keep the same font.

We recommend leaving the check box blank if the other person may edit the file.

Troubleshooting

Is embedding your font still not working? Not all TrueType fonts can be embedded. Font creators can set different options for their fonts, including: Non-embeddable, Preview/Print, Editable, and Installable. To see what level of embedding your installed font is, go to Control Panel in Windows and click Fonts. Clicking on the font shows the Font embeddability setting.

Office cloud fonts won’t appear in this list, but you rarely need to embed those anyhow since they’ll automatically download if they’re not already installed on the machine that opened the file.

Is your file size too large after embedding fonts? Certain fonts can be very large compared to others, so if file size is a concern, consider using alternative fonts. If you want to remove the embedding, you can turn off the Embed setting in the File > Options dialog box (described above) and save the file. Then, once you close and re-open the file, a different font is substituted for the font that had been embedded previously.

• Select which version of Office for macOS you’re using
• Microsoft 365 / 2019 for Mac
• Office 2016 for Mac

In Word for Microsoft 365 for Mac, PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 for Mac and PowerPoint 2019 for Mac, you can embed fonts in a presentation.

Word 2019 for Mac and Excel 2019 for Mac don’t currently support embedded fonts.

Embed fonts in a document or presentation

This feature is only available to Microsoft 365 Subscribers and in PowerPoint 2019 for Mac, version 16.17 or later.

Open the file you want to embed fonts in.

On the application ( PowerPoint or Word) menu, select Preferences.

In the dialog box, under Output and Sharing, select Save.

Under Font Embedding, select Embed fonts in the file.

Preferences to turn on font embedding for your file»>

When you save the file, the fonts used in it will be embedded in the file.

Recommendations for embedding fonts

When embedding a font, avoid using Embed only the characters used in the presentation. It is better to embed all the characters in a font so that another user can successfully edit the file, if necessary.

Use OpenType (.OTF) or TrueType (.TTF), if possible. OpenType fonts consume the least storage space when embedded in an Office document.

Avoid embedding Postscript fonts (.PFB, .PFM) if possible. Some users report having difficulty opening an Office document that has a Postscript font embedded in it.

Troubleshooting

Is embedding your font still not working? Not all TrueType fonts can be embedded. Font creators can set different options for their fonts, including: Non-embeddable, Preview/Print, Editable, and Installable. To see what level of embedding your installed font is, go to the Font Book app and select the Information button at the top left. Clicking on the font shows the font information in the right-hand panel, and for many (but not all) fonts you’ll be able to locate information on whether the font can be embedded.

Is your file size too large after embedding fonts? Certain fonts can be very large compared to others, so if file size is a concern, consider using alternative fonts. If you want to remove the embedding, you can turn off the Embed setting in the Preferences dialog box (described in the procedure above) and save the file. Then, once you close and re-open the file, a different font is substituted for the font that had been embedded previously.

Requirements for embedded fonts

Save embedded fonts in a file

Word for Microsoft 365 for Mac, PowerPoint for Microsoft 365
PowerPoint 2019 for Mac
Find your Office version number

You can’t embed fonts in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac but it does correctly display fonts that have been embedded in the file by a more modern version of PowerPoint.

The other Office 2016 for Mac apps don’t support embedded fonts.

Requirements for displaying embedded fonts

Display fonts that have been embedded

PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, version 16.11
Find your Office version number

Fonts

This design guide was created for Windows 7 and has not been updated for newer versions of Windows. Much of the guidance still applies in principle, but the presentation and examples do not reflect our current design guidance.

Users interact with text more than with any other element in Microsoft Windows. Segoe UI (pronounced «SEE-go») is the Windows system font. The standard font size has been increased to 9 point.

The Segoe UI font.

Segoe UI and Segoe are not the same font. Segoe UI is the Windows font intended for user interface text strings. Segoe is a branding font used by Microsoft and partners to produce material for print and advertising.

Segoe UI is an approachable, open, and friendly typeface, and as a result has better readability than Tahoma, Microsoft Sans Serif, and Arial. It has the characteristics of a humanist sans serif: the varying widths of its capitals (narrow E and S, for instance, compared with Helvetica, where the widths are more alike, fairly wide); the stress and letterforms of its lowercase; and its true italic (rather than an «oblique» or slanted roman, like many industrial-looking sans serifs). The typeface is meant to give the same visual effect on screen and in print. It was designed to be a humanist sans serif with no strong character or distracting quirkiness.

Segoe UI is optimized for ClearType, which is on by default in Windows. With ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is an elegant, readable font. Without ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is only marginally acceptable. This factor determines when you should use Segoe UI.

Segoe UI includes Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic characters. There are new fonts, also optimized for ClearType, created for other character sets and uses. These include Meiryo for Japanese, Malgun Gothic for Korean, Microsoft JhengHei for Chinese (Traditional), Microsoft YaHei for Chinese (Simplified), Gisha for Hebrew, and Leelawadee for Thai, and the ClearType Collection fonts designed for document use.

Meiryo includes Latin characters based on Verdana. Malgun Gothic, Microsoft JhengHei, and Microsoft YaHei use a customized Segoe UI. Use of italic versions of these fonts is not recommended. Malgun Gothic, Microsoft JhengHei, and Microsoft YaHei are supplied in regular and bold styles only, meaning italic characters are synthesized by slanting the upright styles. Although Meiryo includes true italic and bold italics, these styles only apply to the Latin characters the Japanese characters remain upright when italic styling is applied.

A variation of Meiryo, called Meiryo UI, is preferred in the ribbons command user interface.

To support locales using these character sets, Segoe UI is replaced with the correct fonts depending on each locale during the localization process.

To license Segoe UI and other Microsoft fonts for distribution with a Windows-based program, contact Monotype.

Note: Guidelines related to style and tone and user interface text are presented in separate articles.

Design concepts

Fonts, typefaces, point sizes, and attributes

In traditional typography, a font describes a combination of a typeface, a point size, and attributes. A typeface is the look of the font. Segoe UI, Tahoma, Verdana, and Arial are all typefaces. Point size refers to the size of the font, measured from the top of the ascenders to the bottom of the descenders, minus the internal spacing (called leading). A point is roughly 1/72 inch. Finally, a font can have attributes of bold or italic.

Informally, people often use font in place of typeface as done in this article but technically, Segoe UI is a typeface, not a font. Each combination of attributes is a unique font (for example, 9 point Segoe UI regular, 10 point Segoe UI bold, and so on).

Serif and sans serif

Typefaces are either serif or sans serif. Serif refers to small turns that often finish the strokes of letters in a font. A sans serif typeface doesn’t have serifs.

Readers generally prefer serif fonts used as body text within a document. The serifs provide a feeling of formality and elegance to a document. For UI text, the need for a clean appearance and the lower resolution of computer monitors makes sans serif typefaces the better choice.

Contrast

Text is easiest to read when there is a large difference between the luminance of the text and the background. Black text on a white background gives the highest contrast dark text on a very light background can provide high contrast as well. This combination is best for primary UI surfaces.

Light text on a dark background offers good contrast, but not as good as dark text on a light background. This combination works well for secondary UI surfaces, such as Explorer task panes, that you want to de-emphasize relative to the primary UI surfaces.

If you want to make sure users read your text, use dark text on a light background.

Affordances

Text can use the following affordances to indicate how it is used:

• Pointer. The I-bar («text select») pointer indicates that the text is selectable, whereas the left-pointing arrow («normal select») pointer indicates that text isn’t.
• Caret. When text has input focus, the caret is the flashing vertical bar that indicates the insertion/selection point in selectable or editable text.
• Box. A box around text that indicates that it’s editable. To reduce the weight of the presentation, the box may be displayed dynamically only when the editable text is selected.
• Foreground color. Light gray indicates that text is disabled. Non-gray colors, especially blue and purple, indicate that text is a link.
• Background color. A light gray background weakly suggests that text is read-only, but in practice read-only text can have any color background.

These affordances are combined for the following meanings:

• Editable. Text displayed in a box, with a text select pointer, a caret (on input focus), and usually on a white background.
• Read-only, selectable. Text with a select pointer and a caret (on input focus).
• Read-only, non-selectable. Text with an arrow pointer.
• Disabled. Light gray text with an arrow pointer, sometimes on a gray background.

Read-only text traditionally has a gray background, but a gray background isn’t necessary. In fact, a gray background can be undesirable, especially for large blocks of text, because it suggests that the text is disabled and discourages reading.

Accessibility and the system font, sizes, and colors

The guidelines for making text accessible to users with disabilities or impairments can be boiled down to one simple rule: Respect the user’s settings by always using the system font, sizes, and colors.

If you do only one thing.

Respect the user’s settings by always using the system font, sizes, and colors.

Developers: From code, you can determine the system font properties (including its size) using the GetThemeFont API function. You can determine the system colors using the GetThemeSysColor API function.

Because you can’t make any assumptions about users’ system theme settings, you should:

• Always base your font colors and backgrounds off system theme colors. Never make your own colors based on fixed RGB (red, green, blue) values.
• Always match system text colors with their corresponding background colors. For example, if you choose COLOR_STATICTEXT for the text color, you must also choose COLOR_STATIC for the background color.
• Always create new fonts based on proportional-sized variations of the system font. Given the system font metrics, you can create bold, italic, larger, and smaller variations.

A simple way to ensure that your program respects users’ settings is to test using a different font size and a high contrast color scheme. All text should resize and display correctly in the chosen color scheme.