Remember to click the New documents based on this template radio button to make this your permanent Normal Template. Figure C Change the spacingĬlick OK a few times to put the modifications into action. This purely a personal preference – your choices are likely to vary, but I like the clean, some might say boring, look of the text. I change the line spacing to Single and the before and after spacing to six points each. I then click the Format button to access the Paragraph options screen ( Figure C). Right-click the Normal Style in the Ribbon to get to the Modify Style options screen shown in Figure B. Personally I like the Arial font and I like my paragraphs spaced evenly, so I change the default Normal Template ( Figure A) right away. I don’t like the default font and spacing in Word – I haven’t liked it since 2007. This suggestion is probably the most obvious and the most often overlooked. This blog post is also available as a TechRepublic Photo Gallery. A few minutes now can save you some frustration later.

And, I mean before you starting using it, not after. Now, the changes I make may not make sense for you and I am not suggesting that everyone do exactly what I do, but I am suggesting that you take a few minutes to adjust the default settings in Word 2013 to make it work the way you want it to work – at least as best you can. However, every new version of Word requires some tweaking to make it work the way I want it to work and Word 2013 is no exception. Microsoft Word has been the primary tool of my trade for many years now (at one time it was WordPerfect) and for the most part I am happy with the application – well, at the very least, I am comfortable with it. Some of the default settings in Word 2013 just don't work for him, so before he does anything else Mark Kaelin changes them. The first nine things I do to default settings in Word 2013

How to change word settings