[upbeat music]
How can you change the default formatting of new documents in Microsoft Word to
match how you want to apply font and paragraph formatting. Hi,
I'm Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro.
I'm also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and a Certified Word Expert.
In this training,
we'll focus on customizing how you want to work with new blank documents in
Microsoft Word. To create a new blank document,
we might do that through File > New and we choose blank document.
Or, even handier, the keyboard shortcut CTRL+N.
Word will give you then a new blank document based upon something called the
normal template, that is, your standard settings.
But this might not be exactly what you want.
Let's look at the default settings that are available to you in Word that you
can also customize. To make this a little bit easier to see,
I'm going to create some random text, so this is a little bonus tip for you.
Anytime you want to practice your Word skills and perhaps not have to actually
type in a lot of text to do so.
All I'm going to do is to type in =RAND
as in random, open parentheses,
10 comma 5.
Now the numbers you can put in for yourself can vary.
The first number is how many paragraphs you want.
And the second is how many sentences in each paragraph.
And close with a close parentheses and then hit ENTER. And now,
I have random text that I can work with and it also is an easier way to
demonstrate and to show some of these default formatting settings.
So the first default that we have in Microsoft Word for a new blank document is
that we have margins of one inch all the way around and our page size and
orientation is letter size and portrait.
These are the settings that apply in the U. S.;
your default settings may be different. To confirm this,
I'll choose the Layout tab and here I can see margins at one inch.
Now I don't need to change those. In this case, I'm happy with those.
But certainly these can always be changed on a document basis and so this is
simply what we have when we have a new blank document. As you can see here,
our line spacing is not single-spaced.
Let's look at the default settings in Microsoft Word. So from the Layout tab,
this is one of the ways I can get here.
I'll go to the Paragraph group and click on this dialog launcher.
That is the little arrow in the corner.
Now we can see here that we have spacing after of 8 point.
That means that when we hit ENTER at the end of a paragraph,
it doesn't simply go down one line.
It builds in a buffer or spacing after of 8 point, that is,
less than one whole space. And our line spacing is not single.
It is 1.08.
Now these were all built in to create what might be considered to be more
typographically
appealing or more visually appealing text. However,
that might not match the standards that you're accustomed to with the documents
you work with in Microsoft Word. For right now, I'll cancel out of this.
We have one other default that also might be something that you want to change.
I'll move to the Home tab so you can see this and that is that our default font
is Calibri 11 point.
If your organization works with Times New Roman or Arial or you want it to be 12
point,
all of these things can be changed either per document or for each new blank
document and that's what we're going to look at is how can we change that.
Here's a little tip is that if you simply wanted to change it for this document
or for only certain paragraphs,
I could select these in the Home tab under Styles.
There's an option here called No Spacing. And so,
for the selected paragraphs,
I could change those to not have any of that spacing afterwards.
And certainly it can be really frustrating if let's say you're creating a letter
or you want to type in the name or the address, you type in Name, hit ENTER,
and now it just simply jumps down and that's not the look that you want to have.
So how can we change these default preferences?
First start with a new blank document. Now in this case,
I'll simply delete the content that I have here.
So I have a new blank document.
Next we'll look at how to change font formatting.
So if my preference was that I wanted Times New Roman 12 point,
then I would go to the Home tab,
go to the Font dialog box,
and we can get there either with CTRL+D or by clicking on that dialog launch or
that little arrow.
And I'll find the font that I want to have as my default font for all future new
blank documents. And in this case, I want that to be Times New Roman,
I can simply start typing that,
here it is in the list and I want it to be 12 point.
So whatever that preference might be. If it was just for this document,
we would choose OK,
but this is what I want to do from this point forward. So instead,
I'll choose Set As Default just to make sure this is what you want.
Word will prompt you:
Do you want to set the default font to Times New Roman for only this document or
all documents based upon the Normal.dotm
template? That is the file that is local to your computer, your system,
and it stores your default preferences when you open up Word and we're presented
with a new blank document. So I will choose all documents and choose OK.
So that's one side of it. You may not choose to change the default font.
Perhaps all you want to do is change the line spacing.
Let's look at how to do that. For many people,
the default paragraph spacing is much more difficult to work with and time
consuming to change in each document.
Let's look at how to change the default paragraph formatting to one that works
for you. Once again, we're in this new blank document.
You don't have to start another one to do this.
We're not even going to save this file.
It's simply to set our preferences in the normal template.
We'll move to the Paragraph dialog box and there's several different ways to get
to that.
I could go to the drop-down here for Line Spacing and choose Line Spacing
Options.
This is kind of a back door to that option or as we saw before,
we can go to the dialog launcher or this arrow that will also open up the
Paragraph dialog box for this.
My preference is I don't want to have any spacing after when I hit ENTER,
so I'll change that to zero points and I want to have standard single line
spacing. If you have a different preference,
simply make those choices and then as we had before, choose Set As Default.
Once again,
confirm that these the preferences you want just for this document or all
documents based upon that normal template. In this case,
I'll pick All documents and choose OK.
Those formatting changes have also taken place in this new blank document,
but let's see what happens when I create a brand new blank document.
As I mentioned before, we could do CTRL+N for new.
Here's a new blank document.
We can see a little bit of information here in terms of our formatting,
but let's try that trick again, =RAND
open parentheses.
Maybe I'll want eight paragraphs and have it be six lines per each one and hit
ENTER. So now I have Times New Roman 12 point as my default.
My line spacing is single-spaced and I do not have any extra spacing at the end
of each paragraph. Once you made those changes, keep in mind,
formatting can be specific to each document.
This is simply how you want to change your blank new documents.
Depending upon your user options, that is,
depending upon what you can change on your system.
You'll likely be prompted to save the normal template when you exit Word,
and so I'll exit out of Word. I don't have to save any of these documents.
Now I have a new session of Word with my new preferred default settings.
Now you've seen how to save time and effort by changing the default formatting
for your new blank documents in Word.
For more tips on being productive with Microsoft Word head to
TheSoftwarePro.com/Word. If this training was helpful,
please like and comment on this video and subscribe to this channel.
This is Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro. Thanks for watching.