To change the font anywhere in your document, you need to begin by making a selection. Next, click on the drop-down menu next to the currently displayed font. The list of fonts that appears is divided into three sections first we have the Theme fonts. Microsoft Word’s Theme feature allows you to quickly format a document to achieve a certain look. The second section shows the fonts that you’ve recently used and the third section contains a list of all fonts installed on your computer.
You can select a font either by using the mouse or the keyboard. To use the keyboard, press the down and up cursor keys. As you do so, Word provides two levels of preview: firstly each font is displayed in its own font; and, secondly, as the mouse passes over each font the highlighted text temporarily changes to that font showing you an excellent preview of what your text will look like in each font. To actually select a font: with the mouse, simply click on the name of the font; with the keyboard, press the Enter key.
If you know the name of the font that you want and you have quite a few fonts installed on your computer, you may find it quicker to type the name. To do this simply delete the current font name and begin typing the name of the font in question. You will not normally have to type the entire name; simply enough to distinguish the font from any others beginning with the same letters. As soon as the correct name is displayed, simply press the Enter key.
Microsoft Word also includes a variety of ways of changing the font size. Firstly, you can click on the drop-down menu to the right of the currently indicated size. As with the font face, when the mouse passes over each size you are given a live preview of what your text will look like at that size. You can also use the up and down cursor keys to select each size. To actually choose a particular size either click on it or press the Enter key. As well as using these preset sizes, you can also type your own size. Simply delete the current size and type the size that you want. When doing this, you may also include decimals. Press the Enter key on your keyboard to apply the size.
Another way of changing the size of your text is to use the Grow and Shrink buttons. These work itogether with the preset sizes we saw earlier; so clicking the Grow button will take you from 16 to 18 to 20; while clicking Shrink will take you back to 18, 16, 14, 12 and so forth.
This technique can still be used if you have different font sizes within your selection. For example, let’s say you highlight a 16 point heading together with 12 point body text. The first thing you will notice is that, since the selection now contains two sizes, no size is indicated in the font size box. If you now click once on the grow icon, the heading will grow from 16 to 18 while the body text will grow from 12 to 14.
The Grow Font and Shrink Font commands can also be accessed via the keyboard. To grow the font, hold down Control-Shift and type in the greater-than symbol and naturally to shrink its Control-Shift less-than. The greater-than and less-than symbols can usually be found to the right of the letter “M” on your keyboard.
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with TrainingCompany.Com, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Word 2007 Classes in London and throughout the UK.