Displaying Actual Font Faces

When you are applying formatting to various parts of your document, you may find it useful to actually see a sample of a font before you apply it. For instance, the drop-down font list on the Formatting toolbar can be very handy if the fonts names are displayed using the representative typeface, rather than just a simple listing of typeface names.

Beginning with Word 2000 you can control whether Word uses typefaces to show font names. You do this by following these steps:

1. Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
2. Make sure the Options tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Ensure the List Font Names in Their Font check box is checked.
4. Click on OK.

If you check out the font drop-down list, you will notice that it now uses the various typefaces to display font names.

Remember that this feature is only available beginning with Word 2000. If you are using an older version of Word, there are third-party solutions that you can use. Two notable (and free) ones suggested by readers are:

• PC Real Fonts, written by Mike Craven. This utility is free, and is available at http://www.zdnet.com/pccomp/help/projects/9808/pccrealfonts/
• Enhanced Font List, written by Mike Craven and Woody Leonhard, which is essentially the same free utility as PC Real Fonts. You can download Enhanced Font List at http://www.wopr.com/vbapower/vbapower.htm

If you prefer to not use an add-in, you can always use the Font dialog box to display what a font will look like. Simply select the text you want to format and then press Ctrl+D. The font dialog box is displayed, with the selected text appearing as the sample at the bottom of the dialog box. As you select different fonts in the dialog box you can easily see the effect it has on the selected text.