Teeny Outlook

Teeny Outlook: a reader asks…

I use Microsoft Outlook (2010) and somehow all the fonts on my window have shrunk down to teeny-tiny sizes. I can’t read it! How can I fix this?

If you use Outlook, you may have accidentally encountered a situation where all the text in messages changes to larger or smaller size. This happens when you accidentally activate a “keyboard shortcut” but didn’t mean to (or even know you were doing so).

Outlook in particular, and almost every program in Windows or Mac systems come programmed with a whole slew of these keyboard shortcuts, which often consist of pressing two keys simultaneously, or pressing one key and doing something with your mouse at the same time.

In the case of changing text size in Microsoft Office programs, you can zoom or de-zoom the text size quickly with this keyboard shortcut:

1. Hold down the Ctrl key, and
2. scroll with the mouse’s center wheel

You scroll down to make text smaller, or scroll up to make things larger. You should note that this doesn’t actually change the size of the font in the message or document, just your zoom view of it.

If you don’t use a mouse with a wheel, there is a second method to change the zoom level: In Outlook, find the View tab (or, if you are using Outlook 2010, there’s a ribbon bar at the top). Look for the item named “Zoom” and click it. You should have 100% selected, but it’s probably 75% or less if you experienced this accidentally. Select 100% and that will fix it for you.

This is actually a Microsoft Officer power users trick. In Microsoft office that Ctrl/wheel thing works for making text smaller or larger across all the Office Programs. Want to zoom in on a Powerpoint presentation? Be able to see the entire Word document to see how it appears on a printed page? It can be handy, lots of folks use this method anytime they want a closer look at text-it’s a lot faster and easier than using the menu controls.