Displaying Actual Font Faces

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 25, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

When you are applying formatting to various parts of your document, you may find it useful to actually see a sample of a font before you apply it. For instance, the drop-down font list on the Formatting toolbar can be very handy if the fonts names are displayed using the representative typeface, rather than just a simple listing of typeface names.

Beginning with Word 2000 you can control whether Word uses typefaces to show font names. You do this by following these steps:

Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
Make sure the Options tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Options tab of the Customize dialog box.

Ensure the List Font Names in Their Font check box is checked.
Click on OK.

If you check out the font drop-down list, you will notice that it now uses the various typefaces to display font names.

Remember that this feature is only available beginning with Word 2000. Regardless of the version of Word you are using, you can always use the Font dialog box to display what a font will look like. Simply select the text you want to format and then press Ctrl+D. The font dialog box is displayed, with the selected text appearing as the sample at the bottom of the dialog box. As you select different fonts in the dialog box you can easily see the effect it has on the selected text.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1550) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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