Microsoft Word troubleshooting and how-to guides
You need to print labels where each row contains a different image — a product photo, a headshot, or a logo — alongside text fields like name and address. Standard mail merge in Word can pull text from an Excel or Access data source, but it does not natively swap images per record inside a … Read more
When you run a mail merge in Word, currency amounts from your data source may display with the wrong currency symbol. For example, a dollar amount may show a euro sign, or a euro amount may show a pound sign. This happens because Word’s currency field codes use the system locale settings rather than the … Read more
When you share a Word document as a PDF, fonts that are not installed on the recipient’s computer get replaced. This substitution can change page breaks, alter table widths, and break the layout you carefully designed. The root cause is that PDF viewers fall back to default system fonts when the original font is missing. … Read more
You open a Word document that was carefully designed with your company’s brand font, but the text now appears in a system default like Calibri or Arial. This happens because Word substitutes missing fonts with a built-in fallback. The substitution can break layouts, misalign logos, and make your document look unprofessional. Word uses a font … Read more
When you insert an equation in Word, the default font is Cambria Math. If you need a different font for mathematical expressions, such as Times New Roman or Arial, you might think you have to switch to a separate equation editor or convert the equation to plain text. That approach breaks the equation structure and … Read more
You select a single document theme in Word, such as Office or Organic, expecting all text to use one consistent font. Instead, you see headings in Cambria and body text in Calibri. This happens because a Word theme is not a single font assignment — it defines a pair of fonts, one for headings and … Read more
When you apply a style like Heading 1 or Normal to text that contains East Asian characters such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, Word may not automatically use the font you want for those characters. The Latin font and the East Asian font are separate settings within each style. This article explains how to configure … Read more
After a recent Windows or Office update, you may open a Word document and see small rectangular boxes, often called tofu boxes, where special Unicode characters, emoji, or non-Latin scripts like Arabic, Chinese, or Devanagari should appear. This happens because the update replaced a system font or changed Word’s default font fallback behavior. In this … Read more
You have downloaded a unique font from a foundry or a free font site and want to use it in all your Word documents. However, after closing and reopening a file, the custom font is sometimes replaced with a default one, or the font does not appear in the font list at all. This happens … Read more
You select a font size in Word, but the Font pane or the font size dropdown shows a different number. This mismatch can be confusing, especially when you need precise formatting for a document. The issue usually occurs because of how Word handles font scaling, character spacing, or paragraph-level settings that override the selected type … Read more