Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Word – Set Default Font and Point Size

You may set the font and point size you wish to use as a default for all your Word documents.

• Press Control+Shift+F to open the Word font dialogue. Focus is place on the Font drop down edit combo control
• The current font is shown, and you can press Alt+Down Arrow to open the drop down list of other available fonts. You can arrow down the list or press the first letter or two of the font you wish to use, for example, type “CA” to jump to the popular Calibri font.
• When you have found the font you wish to use, press TAB to move to the font style drop down. Regular is the best choice for a default font style, but there is a drop down list of other choices you may access with Alt+Down Arrow.
• Then, TAB to the Point Size edit combo and either type the point size you wish, or press Alt+Down Arrow to open the list of point sizes and arrow down to the size you wish. 11 point is generally used for most documents but perhaps you want a larger point size such as 14 or 18 to write your documents in large print. As a guide, 72 point is 1 inch high letters, so 18 point would be letters that are one quarter inch high which is very large.
• After you select the point size, TAB through the remaining controls which may be ignored because they provide other font attributes such as bolding, underlining, and superscripting which are not relevant for a default font
• When you reach the “Set as Default” button, press spacebar to activate it.
• TAB through this dialogue and you will encounter two radio buttons to choose whether you want your font changes to apply only to the current document or all documents based on Normal template. Arrow to the “All Documents” button and press Enter. You will be returned to your document. Now, your new font and point size will apply to all future documents that you create.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.