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One thing you will notice when you open up Word 2007 for the first time, (or PowerPoint 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007.. basically any Office 2007 product) is that Times New Roman is NO LONGER the default font! Times New Roman has been replaced by a SAN SERIF!!! (That’s one with no feet for those playing at home) font by the name of Calibri.
I will not pass judgement today on which is the better font… because it depends entirely on what you are doing with your document. Traditionally Serif fonts (the ones with feet) like Times New Roman were better for printed documents, and Sans Serif fonts (no feet) are better for documents to be displayed on screen. Is Microsoft making the assumption that most documents are now viewed on screen and not printed? In a commercial environment I would suggest that is very accurate (do you print all your emails? and all your word documents at work???).
That being said, it looks like Calibri is making its way into more and more places… even before the release of Office 2007. Check out any of the coverage of the Australian Open Tennis Championships taking place at the moment… the “Melbourne” text on the court looks as though it is in Calibri! (or something very very close to it!).
But that begs the next question. What if you don’t like Calibri? How do you change the default font in Word 2007 to something that you like? It is much easier than you think! Here is a quick tutorial to get you started!
- On the “Home” tab of the Word 2007 Ribbon, in the font group, select the “More Options” button. See the image below if you don’t know which button that is.
- On the Font Dialog box that appears, simply select the font, font size, font style, font colour etc that you would like to be the default, and then select the “Default” button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. It will ask you if you really want to change the default font, and of course you want to click yes. If you have selected your default font as “Comic Sans MS”, I would encourage you to click NO!!!!! at that stage
So there you have it, a quick introduction into Typography, Default Fonts, and what will soon become everyone’s favourite font (by default)… Calibri.
’till next time,
TNP 
tags: australian open, font, office 2007, tutorial, word 2007
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A little more info I’d add to this post - according to the Vista product guide, Calibri is one of six fonts MS developed to take advantage of the way ClearType works (which is on by default in Vista BTW). This would totally support your hypothesis about viewing documents on screen vs printing them out.
Personally, for documents over a couple of pages, I still prefer to print them out. Maybe it has something to do with my tendency to want to put my feet up when I’m reading something.
That’s because your screen has 96 or maybe 120 DPI resolution while print has at least 300 DPI. It’s a huge gap. ClearType (which is on by default in Vista and IE7 for XP) narrows that gap, but it’s still not perfect. Interviews with Bill Hill on Channel9 (http://channel9.msdn.com/Showforum.aspx?forumid=14&tagid=19) provide huge amount of information on that subject.
If someone wants to learn more about typography, fonts and ClearType i recommend watching interviews with Bill Hill on Channel9. They are simply awesome.
[...] It is easy in Word 2007… but in Outlook 2007 it is a little different… but here is how! [...]
YOU’RE MY HERO! I liked the fact that my Publisher and Word in ‘07 were more stable, but I couldn’t figure out how to customize them! I love you!
Jane
Thanks for the article. A quick search on google for changing default font yielded your article. I still prefer reading TNR fonts on screen and on paper !!
thanks for the tips on changing the default font (didn’t realize it was that simple), times new roman has grown on me over the years, and i’m not quite ready to change fonts yet
Thanks
Hi,
With my office 2007, this default font technique does not work at all. I must have tried it some hundred times till now. The new documents all open in Clibri size 11. And it is a big nuisance for me, because I have to follow the style sheet prescription of international journals. All the international journals prescribe that the researchers use Times New Roman font 12. It is very frustrating and sad that Microsoft has added non-sense font with non-sense font size as the default. And then they design the office such that you are not able to change the default font.
I just can’t imagine what kind of blokes run that billion dollar company!
Do you know if anyone has been able to use the tip to change the default font? It sure does not work on my computer. I have a vista installed, another crappy system churned out of MS industry. It comes with Windows Media Player 11, which is crappier than 10 and 9. Its user interface has become user-unfriendly. By the way, that’s true for MS Office 2007 also.
The simplest method is to create a style that uses your preferred font. Then you can type out the text using Word’s default font, and then apply the style(s) you need.
The easiest way to change any of the defaults in Word 2007 is to open the Normal template (Normal.dot or Normal.dotm) and make all the changes to that document. Then save. All the other methods just don’t seem to “stick.”
I’ve found that doing this changes the defaults so that when Word starts up, the document sitting there is just how I want it.
I have tried the default button under each heading. I have tried the default on the style. I have even tried changing the default on the word template. I save them all. NOTHING IS DEFAULTING!! The template shows up as the way I would like it to be but yet each new document is still beginning with the calibri 11 pt, with double spacing. WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?? No one seems to have an answer….not even MICROSOFT. And it seems I am not the only one with this problem. My husband’s 2007 is doing the same as well as several people on the internet that I have come across reading.
I love the new font. And the new default title font Cambria which is a serif font and much preferable to Times New Roman (IMHO) if you want serifs.
I am also pleased that the Word 2007 converter, which I installed at work where I have Word 2003, automatically installs Cambria and Calibri for you and now it’s my default font on Word 2003.
Thanks so much, i was searching for how to change default font for ages. So beneficial knowledge, thanks thanks:):)
My Word Default font is Calibri 11, so I don’t agree that this is supposed to be good for online documents.
The reason is that printed documents are held and read at less than an arm’s length away, and so you can be comfortable with a 12 point font.
But online documents are viewed on a screen that is located two or three times farther away than your hand held paper. So this font size should have been increased to adjust for the change in distance.
So the Microsoft Word people need to increase the font-size if this is supposed to work for online documents.
“Traditionally Serif fonts (the ones with feet) like Times New Roman were better for printed documents, and Sans Serif fonts (no feet) are better for documents to be displayed on screen. Is Microsoft making the assumption that most documents are now viewed on screen and not printed? ”
The Times New Roman with a 16 font-size is the default for the Firefox Browser, so this reasoning is not correct.
Times New is an UGLY and MESSY font! I am so glad it is gone!
Surely one could simpy delete the grotesque and hideous Calibri from the list of Windows fonts?
Awful. I don’t write stuff on Word unless I’m going to be printing it. Yet again MS’s ‘innovations’ are worse than worthless to me
Good article thanks!
How do you pronounce Calibri?
1. CA-LEE-BREE
2. CAL-A-BREE
Thanks.
THANK YOU! I’ve been SO ANNOYED at that Calibri font. You have made my day, nay, my week! Possibly month. I shall think of you whenever I write a letter, article or story.