1. Click the 'Start' button on your Windows computer.

1. Word's local default is your User Documents library, but you can change it as follows: Click the File tab and choose Options. In the left pane, select Save. In the Save Documents section, enter.
2. Click the Set As Default button in the bottom-left corner of the Font dialog box. Changing the Default File Save Location If you want to save your documents to a particular location on your computer, such as your documents, desktop, downloads or folder location, this is how to change the default setting.

Here is how to change the most used Word default options. Changing the default font option. 1.) Click the Home tab on the Ribbon. 2.) Click the Font dialog box launcher button, located in the bottom-right corner of the Font group. 3.) Set the font formatting as desired. Thankfully, there’s a way to configure Word to use the “Keep Text Only” option by default. To set it up, launch Microsoft Word and open or create a new document. Next, click File in the ribbon toolbar, and then choose Options from the sidebar on the left. This will open the Word Options window.

2. Click 'Default Programs'.
3. Click 'Associate a file type or protocol with a program'.
4. Scroll through the list of file extensions. You'll see that all the Microsoft Word-related file types, such as .doc, .docx. and .dot already have Microsoft Word as default. This makes sense, as Word is the creator of these file formats.
5. Scroll down to other text-based formats, such as '.txt'. This is the Plain Text format, which also can be opened in Microsoft Word. The default setting is to open text files in Notepad. To change it to Microsoft Word, select it and then click 'Change Program'. Select 'Microsoft Office Word' under 'Recommended Programs'. Click 'OK.' Wait while Windows makes the change. Text files will now automatically open in Word.
6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 for any other text-based files, such as .rtf (Rich Text Format).
7. Click 'Close'. Exit out of the 'Default Programs' window.
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Note

Office 365 ProPlus is being renamed to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. For more information about this change, read this blog post.

This article provides detailed steps for administrators to set the default font for Microsoft Office applications, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Set the default font for Word

Note

There are no direct Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to set the default font in Word (for both Office 365 and 2016).

1. Create a blank file that is configured by using the font and styles that you want to set as the default.
2. Select File > Save As.
3. Select the .dotm file name extension.
4. Save the file to %Appdata%MicrosoftTemplates.
5. Replace the Normal.dotm file.
6. After the Normal.dotm file is created on the administrator's computer, you can deploy the same file to the %Appdata%MicrosoftTemplates location on users' computers.

For more information, see Change the default settings for new documents.

Set the default font for Excel

• Set a cloud policy (for Office 365):

  1. Create a font policy from Policy Management.

  2. Apply the cloud policy to a security group that target users are members of.

• Set a GPO (for Excel 2016):

  File name	Policy setting name	Scope	Policy path	Category	Registry information	Part	Default setting	Possible settings	Supported on	Help text
  excel16.admx	Font	User	Microsoft Excel 2016Excel OptionsGeneral	General	HKEY_CURRENT_USERsoftwarepoliciesmicrosoftoffice16.0exceloptionsfont	Name, Size Arial, 10	[ ]	At least Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7	Specifies the 'Standard font' font name and size.

Set the default font for PowerPoint (for both Office 365 and Office 2016)

To set default font for PowerPoint, set a default theme, and save it as a .potx file.

Note

Setting the default template requires the following items:

• The correct file name: Default Theme.potx
• The correct location: %Appdata%MicrosoftTemplatesDocument Themes

To set the default theme, follow these steps:

1. Start PowerPoint.

2. Open an existing PowerPoint template that you have configured by using the font and styles that you want to set as the default.

3. Select File > Save As.

4. Select PowerPoint Template (*.potx) in the file type list. This automatically changes the folder location to Custom Office Templates (a personal template folder).

   Note

   Don't save it here because this enables you to view your template under Custom Office Templates.

5. Select More options to opens a file name dialog box, replace the whole file name with %Appdata%MicrosoftTemplates, and then press Enter.

6. In the Templates folder, open the Document Themes folder. If you see a Default Theme.potx file existing in the folder, you can also make a backup of the file. To do this, select the file, press Ctrl+C, and then press Ctrl+V.

7. Enter the name 'Default Theme' to manually name the file, and then save it. If a Default Theme.potx file exists, you can also select the Default Theme.potx file, and then select Save to overwrite it.

8. Close PowerPoint, and then select File > New. Now, you see the default template that's displayed as an option.

How To Set Microsoft Word As Default Program

For more information, see Change the default font in PowerPoint.