1

Recently, when opening a document in O365 web app, the font has changed from "Calibri 11 font" to "Times New Roman 10 font". This used to work properly.

How can I correct this? Note that opening the same document in desktop word app shows the correct font. This is done using OneDrive which syncs online docs with your local file system (similar to Google Drive and Dropbox).

This is the desired font (image) with Calibri 11 as the default paragraph style.

enter image description here

And this is how the same doc looks when opening in the O365 web app. The default paragraph font has now changed to Times New Roman 10.

enter image description here

Something changed and I'm not sure what.

Has anyone else seen this behavior, and knows how to fix it?

Searching for a solution

I searched for o365 word fonts don't match desktop fonts. Some links are shown but none answer the question.

Improve this question
5
  • 1
    Thanks. I understand. I think I'm fine with sharing the document because it is just a personal template file that I created years ago to have all of the styles I've worked with over the years, but I'll need to examine it and strip out any personal info first. Let me see what I can do. I can post it in github.
    – PatS
    Commented Jul 29 at 2:11
  • 1
    See document in my github repo at github.com/steranka/public-repo/tree/main/stackexchange-stuff/…
    – PatS
    Commented Jul 29 at 22:38
  • 1
    Its worth noting that I have access to two O365 Organizations and placed the file in both originations OneDrive. In one (my personal O365) the fonts display correctly, in another work (say work O365) it does not display the fonts correctly. This applies to the O365 Web app. The fonts display correctly when opened in local desktop Word.exe app.
    – PatS
    Commented Jul 29 at 22:40
  • See if any of the three files I uploaded behave any differently.
    – Blindspots ♦
    Commented Jul 30 at 2:15
  • 1
    Sorry for the delay. Two of the files fixed the formatting! What did you do? How did you fix it? The results are listed in sorted order The names are:File1=Docx Template Only Upgrade Format.docx (did not work), File2=Docx Template Minor Style Change.docx (did work), and File3=Docx Template Minor Style Change & Upgrade Format (did work)**. Please post the response as an answer.
    – PatS
    Commented Aug 12 at 14:49

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

I appreciate you making a copy of the document available since there were so many unknowns about your use case regarding both the environment and the document properties.

Although I isolated your problem I could never reproduce the issue on my end, even with your source document. I suspect the specific combination of the document and your organization's operating environment (app config/version, corporate policies, etc.) exposed the problem.

Without being able to reproduce the issue, I could only look for anomalies related to styles and the "Times New Roman" font.

I compared your document to new documents created in Word on the Web and Desktop for clues.

  1. I noted your document's styles.xml file has the default font specified as "Times New Roman" across multiple languages whereas new documents created online and on desktop would point to the default theme. For example, in your document the default for US English is w:ascii="Times New Roman" whereas in new documents it is w:asciiTheme="minorHAnsi".
  2. Your theme file theme1.xml has the minorfont/minorHAnsi specified as Calibri so I wonder if your online environment is following the directive in styles.xml whereas your desktop environment, as well as both of mine (desktop and online), ignores that style in favor of what's specified in the theme: 
    <a:latin typeface="Calibri" panose="020F0502020204030204"/>.

I created 3 test files for you:

  1. Upgraded File Format
    You reported no improvement.
  2. Style Change
    Resolved your problem.
  3. Upgraded File Format + Style Change
    Resolved your problem.

The successful test files point to the configuration of styles.xml being the issue.

To replicate the change I made to styles.xml:

  1. Decompress your word document (I used 7-Zip).

  2. Edit the file .\word\styles.xml by replacing the bolded line below

    <w:docDefaults> 
   <w:rPrDefault>
     <w:rPr>
       <w:rFonts w:ascii="Times New Roman" w:eastAsia="Times New Roman" w:hAnsi="Times New Roman" w:cs="Times New Roman"/>

    with the following bolded line:

    <w:docDefaults> 
   <w:rPrDefault>
     <w:rPr>
       <w::rFonts w:asciiTheme="minorHAnsi" w:eastAsiaTheme="minorHAnsi" w:hAnsiTheme="minorHAnsi" w:cstheme="minorBidi"/>

    dif of two

  3. Recompress the document.I used 7-Zip with 'normal' compression, Zip as the format, and docx as the file extension. Remember to compress the contents of the parent folder but don't include the parent folder. You can do this by performing the compression from within the parent folder. File structure example

MS DocumentFormat.OpenXml Resources

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    You are a rock star! Amazing. This will definitely help me in the future tracking down weird Word problems. In dozens of years with Word, I haven't had to get into this level of detail! Thank you.
    – PatS
    Commented Aug 15 at 12:55
  • 1
    My pleasure. I appreciate you investing the necessary effort as well! FYI, interacting with Office files (eg. .docx .xlsx .pptx) as archives is an option for directly accessing embedded content, such as the images, which will be stored together in a directory.
    – Blindspots ♦
    Commented Aug 15 at 16:04

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.