Increasing the Size of the Draft Font

Word provides an editing mode that allows you to suppress many of the frills typically associated with a document's display. This mode, called draft mode, results in documents being displayed in a draft font with only minimal formatting, and graphics being displayed only as place-holder boxes or blank lines (depending on which version of Word you are using). You put Word into this draft mode by selecting the Draft view button near the right side of the status bar if you are using earlier versions of Word. If you are using Word 2013 or a later version, you will have to access Draft mode by displaying the View tab of the ribbon and clicking Draft in the Views group.

For some people, the draft font used in this mode may not be large enough to be easily visible. You can modify the actual font used as the draft font, along with its size. This setting is made by following these steps:

1. 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.)
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Advanced.
3. Scroll through the options until you see the Show Document Content section. (See Figure 1.)



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

4. Select the Use Draft Font in Draft and Outline Views check box.
5. Use the two controls under the check box to specify what font and size of font you want to use.
6. Click OK.

If you prefer to not change the actual font used in Draft view, you can change the apparent size of the text by simply changing the zoom setting for the screen. Simply increase the zoom setting until the text is the size you find comfortable.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7916) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Increasing the Size of the Draft Font.