Change Default Font in Writer

Hi!

This forum has been very helpful twice before - let’s hope the third time is also the charm!

Every time I open Libre Office Writer, it starts me out in Liberation Serif.

To be honest, I’m getting a little tired of changing it every time?

Can I change the default font permanently, and, if so, how?

Thanks!

  1. This isn’t a forum. This is a questions and answers site.
  2. Search the site, this question has been covered many times.

Hello,

yes, there are methods:

Method 1 - New default template:

  • Open LibreOffice
  • Start a new Writer document
  • Open Styles Manager via menu View -> Styles (or F11)
  • Click icon leftmost (showing Paragraph Styles when hoovered over)
  • Right click -> Modify -> Tab: Font on Default Paragraph Style
  • Make your changes and click button OK
  • File -> Templates -> Save As Template
  • Select a Template Name (e.g.- MyWriterDefault)
  • Select a Template Category (e.g.- My Templates)
  • Important Click option [x] Set as default template
  • Click button Save
  • File -> Close (no need to Save)
  • Open a new document and check, whether new settings opens with desired font settings.

Method 2 - Change font settings

  • Open LibreOffice
  • Start a new Writer document
  • Tools - Options -> LibreOffice Writer -> Basic Fonts (Western)
  • Change the fonts to your preferred values
  • Click button Apply
  • Close the document (no need to save)
  • Open a new document an check, whether new setting get applied

Hope that helps.

LibreOffice 7.4.0 This solution does NOT change the font for most of the character style options such as: caption characters, definitions, drop caps, etc.
I followed the instructions (both method 1 and method 2) to change default font to: Tahoma, Although the paragraph styles were correctly changed, the character styles were not.
Any way other than changing them one-by-one?

This is by design. Character styles are supposed to provided “marginal” changes over properties defined by paragraph styles.

Built-in character styles, except Source Text, Teletype and User Entry, don’t change font face. Only customised or user character styles change font face. So, you should know which one to fix.

I hope you don’t confuse character styles with direct formatting. If you applied your font changes with direct formatting, welcome in formatting hell. There is no other solution than manually chasing the formatting. Or, you select all the text and Ctrl+M to clear direct formatting and you then apply character styles to restore your formatting.

Note that with a well designed style set, you only have a handful of character styles (say ~10) which is easily manageable.

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