Outlook written body formatting

Question

Outlook written body formatting

J-Norris, M 0

Is there a way to always have the font and font size on my emails remain the same when opening or responding to emails?

J-Norris, M 0 Reputation points

2026-07-24T18:35:41.0733333+00:00

Is there a different process that I could not find within the New Outlook?
Chris Duong 10,620 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-07-24T20:34:47.5433333+00:00
Hi J-Norris,

Thank you for your response.

In New Outlook, you can change the default font and font size for emails you compose, reply to, or forward by going to:

Settings gear icon > Mail > Compose > Message format

From there, you can choose your preferred font, size, and style, then select Save.

This applies only to emails you compose, reply to, or forward. For emails you receive, Outlook generally displays the message using the sender’s original formatting, so there is no setting to force all received emails to use the same font and font size.

Please contact if you need anything else.

2 answers

Your answer

J-Norris, M 0 Reputation points

2026-07-24T18:35:41.0733333+00:00

Is there a different process that I could not find within the New Outlook?
Chris Duong 10,620 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-07-24T20:34:47.5433333+00:00

Hi J-Norris,

Thank you for your response.

In New Outlook, you can change the default font and font size for emails you compose, reply to, or forward by going to:

Settings gear icon > Mail > Compose > Message format

From there, you can choose your preferred font, size, and style, then select Save.

This applies only to emails you compose, reply to, or forward. For emails you receive, Outlook generally displays the message using the sender’s original formatting, so there is no setting to force all received emails to use the same font and font size.

Please contact if you need anything else.

Answer 1

Stefan Blom 347.6K MVP Volunteer Moderator

In classic Outlook for Windows, you can instruct the program to read all incoming mails in plain text format and then you can control the look by specifying which font and size to use for plain text e-mails. This gives you full control over the appearance, but obviously you may lose information, since many e-mails are in fact formatted when you receive them. (There are no corresponding settings in the new Outlook.)

0 comments

Answer 2

Hi J-Norris,

Good day. Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

In classic Outlook, you can set a default font and font size for emails you compose, reply to, or forward by going to:

File > Options > Mail
Under Compose messages, choose Stationery and Fonts.
From there, you can configure the font settings for both New mail messages and Replying or forwarding messages.

For your reference: Change the default font or text color for email messages in Outlook | Microsoft Support

However, for emails you receive and open, Outlook generally displays the message using the formatting provided by the sender. Therefore, there is no setting to force all incoming emails to always use the same font and font size.

As a workaround, you can use the Zoom option when reading messages to make the content easier to view, but this only changes the display size and does not replace the sender’s original formatting.

I hope this helps clarify the behavior in classic Outlook. Should you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please feel free to share them in the comment below. I'm very happy to help.

Thank you again for your patience and understanding.

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