Wordpad in Win 7: How to change the default font and size

fontswordpad

When I open a new Win 7 Wordpad doc and start typing, the font is size 11 Calibri. Is there a way to change the default in a newly opened doc to size 12 Verdana?

Best Answer

Quick analysis

When creating a blank document, WordPad uses a predefined font. In Windows 7 and later, it will use one of the following, depending on the system locale:

  • Aparajita, 11 pt
  • Arial, 10 pt
  • Arial, 11 pt
  • Calibri, 11 pt
  • CordiaUPC, 14 pt
  • DaunPenh, 16 pt
  • DokChampa, 12 pt
  • Estrangelo Edessa, 10 pt
  • Iskoola Pota, 11 pt
  • Kalinga, 11 pt
  • Kartika, 11 pt
  • Malgun Gothic, 10 pt
  • Microsoft Himalaya, 16 pt
  • Microsoft Yi Baiti, 12 pt
  • Mongolian Baiti, 14 pt
  • MS Mincho, 11 pt
  • MV Boli, 10 pt
  • PMingLiU, 11 pt
  • Raavi, 11 pt
  • Shonar Bangla, 11 pt
  • Shruti, 11 pt
  • SimSun, 11 pt
  • Sylfaen, 10 pt
  • Tunga, 11 pt
  • Vani, 11 pt
  • Vijaya, 11 pt

Those fonts are hard-coded in the wordpad.exe.mui resource file. When opening plain text (.txt) files, the font will be automatically set to Courier New. WordPad doesn't provide a way to customize either behavior.

Further reading

Handmade customization

With some work you can bend the rules, and pick a custom font. The following steps apply to Window 7 and later.

  1. Download and install Resource Hacker.

  2. Create a new WordPad document, and check what's the default font displayed. Then close all WordPad instances.

  3. Navigate to the WordPad folder, which is usually located here:

     C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories

  4. Locate and open the folder named after a culture name which matches your system locale (e.g. en-US for US English).

  5. Copy the wordpad.exe.mui file to the desktop, and rename it to wordpad2.exe.mui.

  6. Start ResHacker, click File > Open, choose the All files (*.*) type, and select the file you copied earlier.

  7. Expand the folder called 23 in the right pane, and then expand its subfolder which should be named 40124. Click the item available there.

  8. Select all text, copy it, and paste into a blank Notepad document.

  9. Open the replace dialog by clicking Edit > Replace. Let's say you want to replace Calibri, 11 pt with Verdana, 12 pt. In that case you would use the following find/replace strings:

    Find what

    size="220" fontFace="Calibri"

    Replace with

    size="240" fontFace="Verdana"

    The font size can be calculated by multiplying the size in points by 20 and omitting the unit: 11 pt becomes 220, 12 pt becomes 240, and so on.

  10. After replacing everything, select all the text, copy it, and go back to Resource Hacker.

  11. Delete the original text, replace the it with the edited one, and click the Compile Script button.

    If you also want to change the font associated with .txt files, expand the String Table folder, expand its first subfolder (which should be called 7), and then change the string associated with number 111. When you're done, click the Compile Script button.

  12. Save the changes by clicking File > Save, and close Resource Hacker.

  13. Put the wordpad2.exe.mui in the same folder where wordpad.exe.mui is.

  14. Open an elevated command prompt, and type or paste the following commands pressing Enter each time. Make sure to replace xx-YY with the correct folder name you retrieved in step 4.

    cd /d "%programfiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\xx-YY" 
takeown /f wordpad.exe.mui /a
icacls wordpad.exe.mui /grant:r *S-1-5-32-544:F
ren wordpad.exe.mui wordpad.exe.mui.old
ren wordpad2.exe.mui wordpad.exe.mui

    Changes are applied immediately.

Screeshots

Before

Screenshot 1

After

Screenshot 2

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