Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Speeding Up Document Display.

Speeding Up Document Display

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 14, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

If you routinely work with large, complex documents, and they are a bit sluggish in displaying on the screen, you may be interested in speeding up your display a bit. One way to do this is to use what Word refers to as Draft Fonts. With this option turned on, Word displays text using a single, bold typeface. It also suspends many other features, such as the displaying of graphics and typographic dingbats. (Dingbats are used to display things such as bullets and special characters.)

The Draft Fonts option affects only the display of your document; you can just as easily turn it off if you need to. To turn on the Draft Fonts option, follow these steps:

Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 or a later version display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
Click Advanced at the left side of the dialog box.
Scroll through the available options until you come to the Show Document Content section. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Advanced options of the Word Options dialog box.

Make sure the Use Draft Font in Draft and Outline Views check box is selected.
Click on OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6271) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Speeding Up Document Display.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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