3

When I open a new Win 7 Wordpad doc and start typing, the font is size 11 Calibri. Is there a way to change the default in a newly opened doc to size 12 Verdana?

Improve this question
0

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
5

Quick analysis

When creating a blank document, WordPad uses a predefined font. In Windows 7 and later, it will use one of the following, depending on the system locale:

  • Aparajita, 11 pt
  • Arial, 10 pt
  • Arial, 11 pt
  • Calibri, 11 pt
  • CordiaUPC, 14 pt
  • DaunPenh, 16 pt
  • DokChampa, 12 pt
  • Estrangelo Edessa, 10 pt
  • Iskoola Pota, 11 pt
  • Kalinga, 11 pt
  • Kartika, 11 pt
  • Malgun Gothic, 10 pt
  • Microsoft Himalaya, 16 pt
  • Microsoft Yi Baiti, 12 pt
  • Mongolian Baiti, 14 pt
  • MS Mincho, 11 pt
  • MV Boli, 10 pt
  • PMingLiU, 11 pt
  • Raavi, 11 pt
  • Shonar Bangla, 11 pt
  • Shruti, 11 pt
  • SimSun, 11 pt
  • Sylfaen, 10 pt
  • Tunga, 11 pt
  • Vani, 11 pt
  • Vijaya, 11 pt

Those fonts are hard-coded in the wordpad.exe.mui resource file. When opening plain text (.txt) files, the font will be automatically set to Courier New. WordPad doesn't provide a way to customize either behavior.

Further reading

Handmade customization

With some work you can bend the rules, and pick a custom font. The following steps apply to Window 7 and later.

  1. Download and install Resource Hacker.

  2. Create a new WordPad document, and check what's the default font displayed. Then close all WordPad instances.

  3. Navigate to the WordPad folder, which is usually located here:

     C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories

  4. Locate and open the folder named after a culture name which matches your system locale (e.g. en-US for US English).

  5. Copy the wordpad.exe.mui file to the desktop, and rename it to wordpad2.exe.mui.

  6. Start ResHacker, click File > Open, choose the All files (*.*) type, and select the file you copied earlier.

  7. Expand the folder called 23 in the right pane, and then expand its subfolder which should be named 40124. Click the item available there.

  8. Select all text, copy it, and paste into a blank Notepad document.

  9. Open the replace dialog by clicking Edit > Replace. Let's say you want to replace Calibri, 11 pt with Verdana, 12 pt. In that case you would use the following find/replace strings:

    Find what

    size="220" fontFace="Calibri"

    Replace with

    size="240" fontFace="Verdana"

    The font size can be calculated by multiplying the size in points by 20 and omitting the unit: 11 pt becomes 220, 12 pt becomes 240, and so on.

  10. After replacing everything, select all the text, copy it, and go back to Resource Hacker.

  11. Delete the original text, replace the it with the edited one, and click the Compile Script button.

    If you also want to change the font associated with .txt files, expand the String Table folder, expand its first subfolder (which should be called 7), and then change the string associated with number 111. When you're done, click the Compile Script button.

  12. Save the changes by clicking File > Save, and close Resource Hacker.

  13. Put the wordpad2.exe.mui in the same folder where wordpad.exe.mui is.

  14. Open an elevated command prompt, and type or paste the following commands pressing Enter each time. Make sure to replace xx-YY with the correct folder name you retrieved in step 4.

    cd /d "%programfiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\xx-YY" 
takeown /f wordpad.exe.mui /a
icacls wordpad.exe.mui /grant:r *S-1-5-32-544:F
ren wordpad.exe.mui wordpad.exe.mui.old
ren wordpad2.exe.mui wordpad.exe.mui

    Changes are applied immediately.

Screeshots

Before

Screenshot 1

After

Screenshot 2

Improve this answer
2
  • This is a good procedure but on Windows 7 SP1 changes to the .mui file seem to have no effect. You have to do one more non-intuitive step: Turn a Windows feature off in the Windows Features control panel, such as "Windows Gadget Platform". This requires a reboot, after which you can immediately turn it back on. This took me many hours to figure out, was inspired by this page sevenforums.com/tutorials/…
    – Georgie
    Oct 30, 2016 at 10:05
  • Also note this works on Windows 10, without needing the "features" trick. Not sure if the exact shell commands shown work, I used the GUI to change permissions.
    – Georgie
    Oct 30, 2016 at 19:03
1

I think a quick google may solve that issue. First google result

Quoting:

One of the easiest is to open Worpad and type one character.

Select the character and set all of the options to what you normally use. Save the file as the default .rtf for Wordpad.

You can now use that file as a template for opening Wordpad with all of your preferred options selected.

If you have Wordpad pinned to the Taskbar, right click the Wordpad icon and you should see the file you just created in the Recent list. Click the 'Pushpin' icon on that file to pin the template to the Wordpad jumplist to keep it handy.

Improve this answer
8
  • You might want to include the essential parts of the answer in your answer. Link only answers may go stale, if say, microsoft decided to change their URL scheme.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    May 31, 2014 at 7:26
  • @arielnmz An answer below the one you quote is:
    – NotSuper
    May 31, 2014 at 9:00
  • The answer quoted by @arielnmz is called in other anwsers in that MS Community forum both a "kludge" and a "workaround". Please see the answer there by ptsome110, who claims he's "finally found a true solution, not a work around!" I'd like to try his idea out, but unfortunately the path he mentions in step 2 has been elided to "%userprofile%\AppData\Roamin… Explorer\Quick Launch". Could someone here figure out what that path should be? Thanks.
    – NotSuper
    May 31, 2014 at 9:15
  • It's been a long time since I last used windows but I think the path is %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\Quick Launch.
    – arielnmz
    May 31, 2014 at 9:19
  • @NotSuper That's just a slighty different way to achieve the same workaround.
    – and31415
    May 31, 2014 at 9:19
1

I just solved a similar problem of my own with WordPad: changes I made wouldn't take as defaults. I ran WordPad as Administrator, and it saved the changes first try.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .