Unwanted Font in Draft View

Suddenly, all of Kathleen's documents (which she works with in Draft view) are in a typewriter font, maybe Times New Roman. Even though the formatting of the text is set to Arial (the font she has used for years because it's easier for her to read with her vision) that is not what displays. If Kathleen change to Print Layout view, it's Arial. But as a technical writer and fiction writer, she prefers working in Draft view. All of her documents have changed, and she would love to know how to change it back.

There are times when—let's face it—Word simply gets confused. This may be one of those times, and the best way to figure out if this is the case is to simply restart the program. If you do, the problem might be fixed, and you are "good to go." However, the confusion may be a little more persistent, in which case you'll want to follow 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. Click Advanced at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Scroll down to the Show Document Content section. (See Figure 1.)



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

4. Clear the Use Draft Font in Draft and Outline Views check box.
5. Click OK.

That should fix the problem. The key was that the font change affected only viewing the document in Draft view. Word treats Draft view as a minimalistic approach to Word, one in which fonts aren't normally that big of a deal. Clearing the check box (step 4) causes Word to pay a bit more attention to fonts in Draft view.

If you prefer to use a specific font when using Draft view (perhaps Arial), then you can leave the check box selected in step 4 and use the controls under the check box to specify the font Name and Size. Word will then override any font settings, while in Draft view, and use that single font to display everything.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13207) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.