Quick Tips Bob, from Walnut Creek, CA asks: I use MSN Hotmail as my email provider. When I want to compose a new e-mail, the program defaults to the Verdana font, size 10. I want to change this, but can't seem to find a way to do it. Can you help?

Bob, from Walnut Creek, CA asks:

I use MSN Hotmail as my email provider. When I want to compose a new e-mail, the program defaults to the Verdana font, size 10. I want to change this, but can't seem to find a way to do it. Can you help?

Bob, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that there is currently no built-in functionality to change a default font with Hotmail. This option may be added in a future release, but, as of now, there is no official way to do this.

So, what's the good news? Well, there is an easy to use workaround that will do almost exactly what you asked. You do not need to download or install any new programs, and everything is done from within the Hotmail options menu. Here's how it works.

You can set up your Hotmail signature with a default font, size and color and save it, so that every time you compose a new email, your font of choice will be saved and ready to type with. Setting this up is not difficult, but there are a few things you need to remember.

To get started, click on the Options menu in the top right of your account, and select More options… from the dropdown menu.



Under the Customize Your Mail heading, click on Personal Email Signature.



Type a few letters into the signature text box and highlight them by clicking and dragging your cursor over the letters. Now you can pick a font, a font size, and a font color that you would like to set as your default. For the purpose of this demo, I have chosen Franklin Gothic, size 16. Click save when you have chosen yours.



Now go back to your inbox and compose a new mail message. It might look like your new settings have not been applied, but bear with me, because all will soon become clear.



Highlight the letters or words you chose as your signature, (you can see above that I chose the word "Hi"), and then start typing over the highlighted section. As if by magic, your text will now appear as the default font settings that you set up with your signature.

If you currently use a signature for contact information, then this may not be the best solution for you, but for everybody else, this is as close as you can come to changing the default font in Hotmail.