Using an Older Font with Word

Kristen's office has a proprietary TrueType font that they must use. As far as she can tell, it was designed in the late 1990s. When they use it in current versions of Word they have to zoom to 160% for it to be readable. Kristen wonders if there are there any ideas or resources on how she might fix the issue.

It is unclear, exactly, what Kristen means by "zoom" in this case. Does it mean that the zoom factor for the document window must be set to 160%, i.e., the zoom slider at the right side of the status bar needs to be set to 160%? Or, does it mean that the font itself needs to be scaled by 160% to be readable? In other words, the text needs to be selected and instead of being set to 10 points, it needs to be set to 16 points.

The easiest way to figure out the root of the problem is to compose a letter or memo using the font and then print it out. Does the printout look the way you expect? Does the printout match what printouts looked like back when the font was first used in the late 1990s?

If the printouts match, then the problem isn't with the font. More than likely it has to do with newer equipment being used with Word and older eyes using that equipment (after all, we are all now a quarter-century older than in the late 1990s). If the printout looks right, then check the resolution of the monitor you are using. If it is a very high resolution, then type is going to look smaller on the screen. This would be the case with any type, not just with the TrueType font that Kristen is questioning.

Try this: Open a new document and type the following at the left margin of the first line:

=rand()

When you press Enter, you should see some "filler text" appear. Select the first paragraph and make sure it is formatted using the TrueType font your company uses. Select the second paragraph and make sure it is formatted using a different font, such as Times New Roman, Courier, or Arial. Then, print the document.

Now, does the printout look readable? How about on screen? Is the type equally legible in both paragraphs?

If the printout looks fine, that's great. If both paragraphs on-screen look equally unreadable, then you only have two choices. You can either reduce the resolution of your monitor, which is done in Windows, or you can increase the zoom factor in the display window to make the text look larger. (I use high-resolution 4K monitors, and I have my zoom factor set at 200% to make the text usable for me.) You can even use a macro to do the adjustment, if desired:

Sub SetReadableZoom()
    ActiveWindow.View.Zoom.Percentage = 160
End Sub

Add the macro to the Quick Access Toolbar or assign it a shortcut key and you can adjust the zoom the desired level with a simple click.

If the on-screen display looks different, well that's a different story. If the first paragraph is not readable, but the second one is, then there is a problem with the company font that needs to be fixed. In the short term you can adjust the size of the company font by 160% (for instance, from 10 point to 16 point), but that is not the best long-term solution. If you cannot change to a different font, then you'll need to do some detective work with the problem font.

Within Windows, display the font folder and locate the file used for your company font. If you double-click the font file, Windows should display metadata about the font. Part of this metadata should be the creator of the font. If the font was a work-for-hire project (meaning that Kristen's company owns the copyright to the font), then all Kristen needs to do is find a competent font creator to examine the font and update it, as necessary.

If the font creator, shown in the metadata, indicates that the copyright holder is someone else, then Kristen will need to see if the person or company still exists and work with them to get an update to the font. If the person or company is no longer around, then it is possible that some other person or company purchased the rights to the font from the original creator. It may take some extensive detective work to track down who that is and get the necessary updates.

Assuming you are successful in locating who can update the font for you, make sure you get it in the OpenType font format. OpenType is a newer format than TrueType and there is a better chance it will continue to be usable with Windows in the future. Plus, the font developer can incorporate a wider range of characters in an OpenType format than can be done in TrueType.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13561) applies to Microsoft Word 2024 and Word in Microsoft 365.