Font size changing unexpectedly in Outlook 2007/2003/XP

[RRuiz]

We are having problems with Outlook, when replying, forwarding or creating
new emails the font changes unexpectedly from 12 points to 120. We don't
realize this until the recipient replies back then we can see the HUGE font.
This is happening in mostly all the computers. We are using word as the
editor and HTML.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

 

[Philippe Lelong]

I have the same problem with Outlook 2003. Did you find a fix?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I have the same problem with Outlook 2003. Did you find a fix?

Check your zoom factor.

 

[Philippe Lelong]

This has nothing to do with the zoom factor, which is a different problem I
know about and which is often associated with this one.
Here the font size changes for one or two letters or words, or a complete
line, while the rest of the whole text remains unchanged. Any idea?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

This is often caused while "browsing" to your own text where different font
settings are defined (like for instance in your signature). Make sure you
are setting your cursor at the correct place after this "browsing around" or
reset the font settings/style via the menu options when this occurs.

Addins and corrupted normal.dot files can also cause this behavior if you do
not think it is a user-error. Disable the addins and reset normal.dot (or
switch to Outlook as the email editor) and see if it still occurs.

 

[Philippe Lelong]

I confirm that this is not a user error. Many different users are
experiencing it, including me (and I am a so-called 'power user' - to be more
specific I have been developping on MS technology for many many years now!).

We do not use Word but only the built-in Outlook editor (which is based on
IE as far as I know). Should we scitch to Word? I'm not sure.

I read somewhere that one workaround would be to define and use a blank
stationary (insted of no stationary at all, which is currently the case).
This blank stationary only defines a white background and a default font.
What do you think about this idea? Is the stationary also used when replying
to an incoming HTML email?

MTIA for your precious help!

 

[EKUAdmin]

Hi Philippe,

Did you got any other hints on this? We've got the same problem here.
Between two keystrokes suddenly the font size increases from Arial 10pt to
12pt. Most of the time it happens with a new line (after tapping "enter").
There are diffrent users with this problem, but they all use OL2003 and the
Word editor is disabled by group policy so they are only supposed to use OL
editor.

Sincerely,
Chris

I confirm that this is not a user error. Many different users are
experiencing it, including me (and I am a so-called 'power user' - to be more
specific I have been developping on MS technology for many many years now!).

We do not use Word but only the built-in Outlook editor (which is based on
IE as far as I know). Should we scitch to Word? I'm not sure.

I read somewhere that one workaround would be to define and use a blank
stationary (insted of no stationary at all, which is currently the case).
This blank stationary only defines a white background and a default font.
What do you think about this idea? Is the stationary also used when replying
to an incoming HTML email?

MTIA for your precious help!

 

[Philippe Lelong]

After extensive research, I found out that the default OL editor is... very
bad at editing HTML mails. We finally switched to Word to edit our emails,
which fixed the problem. We also added some custom macros to force the normal
style to our default font, since when replying or forwarding an email the
Normal style always defaults back to Times New Roman 12pt (there isn't any
solution to change this strange behavior).

HTH,

Philippe.

 

[EKUAdmin]

Thanks for your answer. Maybe one day MS will find a fix for that, cause we
don't want to use Word editor to write our emails.

Regards
Chris

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Outlook 2007 has a completely new editor based on Word but note that also
Words HTML rendering engine has been pretty much redesigned from the ground
up in Word 2007.

 

[Marleneburton]

I am having the same problem in Outlook 2003. This problem only started on my
computer two days ago.

My default font is set to arial 12 but outlook has decided to change it to
times new roman 12 whenever I forward and reply. (the past two days)

Some other program from the web or whatever has reset this thing and that is
virus like behaviour.

THE LAST TIME I HAD THIS PROBLEM WITH OUTLOOK (November) I started having
svchost.exe errors. I wound up spending 3 weeks on line and on the phone with
Microsoft trying to save 5 years of data.

Prior to discovering it was actually a really bad virus and worm problem I
had spent a week with microsoft on line and on the phone to figure out why
some of my old correspondence (word 2003) was adding a date footer field to
the bottom of my emails. The problem was closed as unresolvable.

THIS IS VIRUS LIKE BEHAVIOUR WHEN OUTLOOK AND WORD START DOING THINGS THEY
NEVER USED TO DO.