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It's time to change the fonts Outlook uses. Outlook can get a vast amount of information on the screen. However, I know my eyes are not as young as they used to be and those fonts look darn tiny sometimes! Maybe you are in the same situation I am. You can give your eyes a break by changing the fonts Outlook uses. Now I'm not talking about changing the size of the text in messages you're reading. That's mostly set by the person who creates the message and out of your control (you can, however, adjust the fonts of the messages you send, which is covered here:
Mail Tips
). I'm talking about things like column headings and Subject lines. Unfortunately, there isn't a single "Make the text bigger!" control you can set. Instead, you need to tweak individual settings in each view. The following steps give the basic procedure for making various changes to the fonts in Outlook views and messages. I've also included detailed steps for these specific views: Note: If all you need to do is temporarily change the size of the fonts (and images) in a message or item that you are working with, you can do so easily. Check out the zoom page.
Outlook requires you to change the fonts, including the text size and style (italics, bold...) of the fonts, for each view individually. The general procedure is pretty simple. The devil is in the details of each view. Here are the general steps for changing fonts in a view:- Open the Customize View dialog box. You can usually get to it by right-clicking an empty section of the view and selecting Customize Current View in the shortcut menu that appears. You can also get to it from the View menu. Click View, then Arrange By, then Custom.
- Click Other Settings to open the Other Settings dialog box and customize the main fonts in the view.
Customize your fonts here.
- Click Automatic Formatting to open the Automatic Formatting dialog box and enter settings for various types of items that may appear in this view. These settings override the ones you set in the Other Settings dialog box.
- Click Format Columns (if visible) to open the Format Columns dialog box and adjust the format, width, and alignment of the columns in the view.
As you can see, changing the fonts in a view can be a bit of a project. I recommend you only do so if it will make a real difference in your experience with Outlook, and you only do it with the views that are most important to you.
The rest of this page covers font changes for specific views.
The Mail views are where most of us spend most of our time in Outlook, so this is clearly the best place to change fonts to start soothing our eyes. The key things to know about changing fonts in Mail views are:- You can change fonts that appear in the Mail pane.
- You need to change the fonts for each Mail view (Inbox, Unread Mail, etc.) SEPARATELY.
- The fonts in the Preview pane work differently and are covered later.
Follow these steps for Inbox, Unread Mail, and any other Mail views you want to modify: - In the main Outlook menu, click View, then select Arrange By.
- In the menu that appears, click Custom to open the Customize View dialog box.
- Click Other Settings to open the Other Settings dialog box.
Basic Mail Font Settings.
- Set the Column Font (the heading at the top of the column), and the Row Font (the Subject line of each message). If you use AutoPreview, set that font as well.
- Click OK to return to the Customize View dialog box.
NOTE: I recommend that you change fonts as shown in the preceeding steps, and really don't recommend doing anything with the Automatic Formatting or Format Columns buttons. But if you must...
- Click Automatic Formatting to open the Automatic Formatting dialog box. Use this dialog box to create or modify the rules that tell Outlook what fonts to use to display specific types of messages. These rules override the ones you set in the Other Settings dialog box.
- Click OK to return to the Customize View dialog box.
- Click Format Columns to open the Format Columns dialog box. You can adjust what various columns will look like if you switch from the default Messages display to a more tabular display.
- Click OK to return to the Customize View dialog box.
- Click OK to return to the Mail window.
That's it for this Change Fonts Tips page. From here you can:
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