Outlook 2011 reports incorrect font size

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My copy of Outlook 2011 is behaving oddly with respect to font sizes.

When I compose an email and set the text to be, for example, 12pt, the text I get when I type within the email composition window is actually 9pt. Moreover, when I send the email to myself and read it on a Windows computer the email is, again, 9pt.

Outlook 2011 therefore seems to be inacurately reporting/setting the font size. Does anyone know why it does this or have a solution?

Edit with some more information about my specific circumstances:

Outlook is set to default at 12pt Calibri, and this is what I am trying to compose in (i.e. its set to this size before I start typing).

The same issue affects all the other fonts in Outlook, but does not affect MS Word.

Outlook and Safari are both up to date.

I am running Mountain Lion on a Retina Macbook Pro 15".

Best Answer

As far as the difference in versions of outlook, MS actually has an official statement about that:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2783553

Summary

Email messages that are sent from Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 to other operating systems may have with a different font size than the original email message font size. For example, when text that has Calibri font size 14 is sent from Outlook for Mac 2011 to Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Web App, the text may be displayed as a font size other than 14 when the message is received on the other operating system.

More information

This is caused by the pixel-to-point or point-to-pixel conversion that happens between the Mac and Windows operating systems.

In other words they're using points in OSX and pixels in Windows.

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