Font change changes formatting - please help!

[billyd1979]

Does anyone know how to prevent the formatting from changing when I change the font in a document? My organization has changed all offical correspondence from Courier New to Times New Roman and when I try to update a document with the new font, it changes all my formatting. MS Word 2013

Please help!

[macropod]

If you have been using Styles properly, changing from Courier New to Times New Roman will only affect the font, not other character attributes. Of course, being a proportional font, you'll find the page layout with Times New Roman is quite different - most likely resulting in far more content per page.

[Charles Kenyon]

It will really mess up a document that is not formatted using Styles, especially one where you press Enter at the end of every line. The reality is that these fonts take up different space on a page. Courier New is a monospaced font; TNR is proportionally spaced.

You may have some work ahead of you. I would recommend that you read this short series of pages before you start. It should take about an hour and will save you weeks of work. Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word - from Shauna Kelly

[Words]

This works for me and is invaluable. Create a macro thus; mine is named Ar10chg because I use it to change everything to Arial 10. All the font sizes, underscores, bold, italic, and font colors are unchanged, but everything becomes Arial 10. Be sure to create a backup first!

Sub Ar10chg()
'
' Ar10chg Macro
' Macro recorded 11/7/2015 by Administrator

Selection.WholeStory
With Selection.Font
.Name = "Arial"
.Size = 10
End With
End Sub

[macropod]

Words,

As has already been indicated, such changes are far better managed by editing the Styles. Your approach creates maintenance issues and is known to eventually contribute to document corruption.

[Charles Kenyon]

Words, this is what the person is likely already doing, albeit manually rather than with a macro. The problem expressed is that doing this changes page and paragraph formatting. That is a result of formatting not using Styles and the use of manual line breaks or the Enter key to manage spacing. If the space bar is used instead of tabs or tables for horizontal spacing, columns will be all over the place. This use of the wrong tools for spacing text on a page will be highlighted by changing from a monospaced font to a proportionally spaced one.

Simply changing the font of text in a document directly (not through use of styles) is done most simply using Replace rather than using a macro. That can be done without changing font size, bolding, Italics, underlining or other formatting.