Make Microsoft Office use the Windows System Font

This is a silly hack, but it’s interesting. You just might want to use the standard system (Windows) font for the Office UI, instead of Microsoft Office’s own fonts.

The standard system font is what you set in the system properties by, for example, right-clicking on the Desktop, going to Appearance, and choosing Large Fonts (or something else).

To make Office use the font you selected as the system font, do the following.

1. Click Start
   
2. Click Run
   
3. Type regedit in the Open input box and hit ENTER key
   
4. Navigate to:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General
   (Here, the 11.0 is for Office 2003; for Office XP and Office
   2000, it’s 10.0 and 9.0 respectively.)
   
5. Incase if you do not have a DWORD Value named UseOfficeUIFont in the right pane,
   • Click New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value
     
   • Type UseOfficeUIFont, and hit the ENTER key to name the entry.
   
   
6. In the right pane, right-click UseOfficeUIFont, and then click Modify.
   
7. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, click Decimal, and then type 0 under Value data to use the Windows system font, or 1 to make Office use its own fonts.

Start or restart any Office program to see the changes.