Fonts in the Font Drop-Down List

When you add a font to Windows, that font shows up in the Font drop-down list on the Formatting toolbar, ready for you to use. The Font drop-down list is interesting because it doesn't list just the fonts available, but also includes a MRU list of the fonts you've used.

If you click the down-arrow at the right side of the Font list, you'll see what I mean. Just before the alphabetic listing of fonts, Word has up to ten fonts listed. These font names are separated from the regular alphabetic list by a horizontal bar in the list. They represent the fonts you most recently used in your formatting.

The MRU list in the Fonts drop-down list cannot be changed or controlled. In other words, you can't dictate how many fonts are listed there, nor can you specify what fonts should be there. The only way to change the list is to actually use the fonts.

Testing has shown that you can't even affect the Fonts list MRU by using macros. You might think that if you change the font of a text selection using a macro that the font name would appear in the Fonts list MRU. This is not the case; the only fonts that show up there are those that are actually selected using the drop-down list.

If you want to have a subset of your fonts available (perhaps the same few you use over and over again) and you don't want to rely on the Fonts list MRU, then you should consider creating your own Fonts toolbar. (Other issues of WordTips explain how to create toolbars; you just need to add the desired fonts to the toolbar.)

One caveat to changing the Fonts list MRU is that you can turn it off completely. Doing so, however, involves making some changes to the Windows Registry. You can find more information about how to disable the Fonts list MRU at this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=199785

The article indicates that it applies only to Word 2000, but the Registry fix it describes will actually work in all modern versions of Word (Word 97 through Word 2003).