How can I change the default font on my emails to 10pt in Lotus Notes r5?

Question

Emails always start off in 9pt and I always have to F2 the text up a font size. I can't see a way of changing the initial font size in any settings though.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Font and font size settings are determined in the mail form in your mail file template. This is nothing that you can set anywhere.

Changes must be done with Notes Designer on the mail file template your organization uses - and then the changes are replicated to your mail file.

Contact your Notes Designer / admin - they would have to change this.

Answer 2

I no longer have access to r5 - that one's quite old! If memory serves it's something like:

File -> Preferences -> User preferences On the Basic tab, click the "Default font" button.

You'll need to restart Notes for the change to take effect, I think.

The later Lotus Notes preferences have a section just for email, but I can't remember if R5 has it or not.

Update: Other things to try:

1. On the same basic tab, I think there is a setting for 'small', 'medium', & 'large' - this will give some gross control over making the font larger, but it won't be a 1 pt change. But if you are currently at 'medium', maybe 'large' will work.
2. Change the default font to one that looks a bit bigger. i.e. instead of 'Times Roman' for the serif font, select 'Garamond' and instead of 'Helv' or 'Arial' for the default sans-serif font, select 'Verdana.'
3. Edit your notes.ini. You can add a line item Display_Font_Adjustment=N, where N is a number from 0 to 25. The number behaves like the 'font' tag in HTML, so a +1 will probably bump you a bit more than you are looking for and it will affect more than just your email, so this may not be the effect your are hoping for, but it's my best shot.

An important note about editing your notes.ini:

Make sure you only edit when notes is not running. Notes writes to this file on exit.

Make sure if you add your Display_Font_Adjustment to the end of notes.ini that you have at least 1 blank line at the end of the file. Otherwise I don't think the last line gets read.

Answer 3

This is a workaround, but it may be helpful if you have NO design access to your mail file, and your IT department won't help.

Notes has a "Permanent Pen" feature. On Notes 7 it's under Text > Permanent Pen when composing an email, but I'm pretty sure Notes R5 has it too.

Set a permanent style to the font/color/size of your choice, then use the shortcut key to enable it when composing an email (On Notes 7 I press Alt T R U). You could use also AutoHotKey or something similar to further automate this.