Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Quickly Changing Font Sizes.
Word allows you a great deal of control over the size of the font used in your documents. If you want to change font sizes quickly, you can follow these steps:
(Remember that to access the < or > keys, you must hold down the Shift key. Thus, some people may refer to these shortcuts as Shift+Ctrl+> and Shift+Ctrl+<. This notation is redundant, however.)
Exactly how much the font size is increased or decreased depends. At smaller point sizes (12 or under), the point size is changed by a single point. Between 12 and 72 points, you are actually stepping through the point sizes available on the pull-down font size tool on the Formatting toolbar (12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, and 72). Thereafter, the font size is changed by increments of ten points. You can use this method to reduce a point size to a single point or to as large as 1638 points.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1767) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Quickly Changing Font Sizes.
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2014-07-18 05:47:10
GeordieLad
A very useful tip of which I was unaware! It's particularly useful for documents with mixed font sizes, achieving a fairly proportional change throughout.
Hitherto, if I wanted to reduce document size by changing font size and used "highlight + font pulldown" I'd have had to go back and reset titles and subtitles individually.
Many thanks
2014-07-17 10:17:26
Alien
Perhaps my keyboard is different but I can use Ctrl+] to increase text size and Ctrl+[ to decrease it. All this is in Word 2007.
Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: 
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