Changing One of Three Fonts

Jon has a document that uses three different fonts in various places and for various purposes. He needs to change one of these fonts to a different one, without affecting any of the text formatted with the other two fonts. He wonders if there is a way to do this.

The easiest way to make this change would be to use styles. For instance, if you had created three styles, one for each of the fonts you use "for various purposes" in your document, then you could easily modify one of the styles to use the new font. This would, in turn, affect all of the text in the document that uses that style, without affecting any of the text that uses the other styles.

If your document doesn't use styles, then making the change gets a bit trickier, but it can be done without too much trouble. The standard way of doing this is to simply use Find and Replace, as illustrated in these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+H. Word displays the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Click the More button, if it is available. The dialog box expands.
3. Make sure the Find box is empty and the insertion point is in that box.
4. Click the Format button and then click Font. Word displays the Find Font dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Find Font dialog box.

5. Using the controls in the dialog box, indicate what font you want to change. (If you want to only change a particular typeface, regardless of the style and size, just choose it in using the Font list.)
6. Click OK to dismiss the Find Font dialog box. The Find and Replace dialog box should still be visible, with the font information you specified showing under the Find box.
7. Make sure the Replace With box is empty and the insertion point is in that box.
8. Click the Format button and then click Font. Word displays the Replace Font dialog box. (This looks almost exactly like the Find Font dialog box.)
9. Using the controls in the dialog box, indicate the font to which you want to change.
10. Click OK to dismiss the Replace Font dialog box. The Find and Replace dialog box should still be visible, with the font information showing under the Replace box.
11. Click Replace All. Word displays a dialog box informing you how many replacements it made.
12. Click OK to dismiss the information dialog box.
13. Click Close to dismiss the Find and Replace dialog box.

The changes in your document should not affect anything (like the other two fonts) that do not match the specifications you use in step 5.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13634) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.