Forum Discussion
Changing the font for envelope printing
I'm using Office Professional Plus 2019. Word prints envelopes in a tiny light font that's almost impossible to read.
There's an "Options" button on the dialog box for printing an envelope. When I clicked it, Word opened a dialog that had "Font..." buttons for the delivery address and return address. I clicked the "Delivery" button, and Word opened a "Font" dialog. I changed the font, then clicked the "Set as Default" button and "OK." Then I did the same for the return address.
Then I printed an envelope, and Word used the same tiny light font as before. When I opened the "Font" dialogs again, they showed the original settings.
What am I doing wrong... or what is Word doing wrong, and how can I fix it? The procedure seems pretty simply an not prone to misunderstanding, but it isn't dong what I think it should.
5 Replies
Try changing Word’s envelope styles directly. The two styles are Envelope Address and Envelope Return, and changing them is a more reliable way to set the formatting for future envelopes.
- Open a blank Word document and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S to open the Styles pane.
- Click Options at the bottom and set Select styles to show to All styles.
- Find Envelope Address, open its dropdown, and choose Modify. Set a readable font, such as Arial 12 pt, with the font color explicitly set to black.
- Select New documents based on this template, then click OK.
- Repeat for Envelope Return. Close Word and save template changes if prompted, then reopen it and test from a new blank document.
Before printing, use Mailings > Envelopes > Add to Document. That lets you inspect the actual address text. If it still looks wrong, select it and apply the corresponding envelope style; Ctrl + Spacebar clears direct character formatting that may be overriding the style.
If the styles themselves revert after restarting Word, the problem is likely that the template changes aren’t being saved or are being overwritten. If the text looks correct in the document and print preview but comes out tiny, check the printer’s envelope paper size and scaling settings instead.
Thank you for your response. However, this did not work out exactly as described. At "Close Wod and save template changes if prompted," "close Word" did not make sense to me, since I had other documents open that I didn't want to close. I closed the new document in which I made the changes, but instead of prompting me to "save template changes," it prompted me to save the modified document as a new template under a new name. Not what I want!
I found that if I simply click "Don't save" (don't save the document as a new template), the changes will have been saved to the template that the new document was based on, and then everything is good.
I tried this, and it appears to be generally true. However, I have several issues with it.
The first is a simple issue of usability: the feature is invisible to the user, and nothing encourages them to check the documentation when there is a highly visible and intuitive procedure for setting the formats (Mailings>Envelope>Options) which does not work.
Second is inconsistency: Word takes the address formatting directly from the style, rather than from the text formatting, which is inherited from the style. Change the text formatting without changing the style, and it has no effect on the printed output. To my knowledge no other part of Microsoft Word works this way.
Third is that Word appears to reduce the size of each part of the address by about 10%, or one point. Thus I must set a larger point size in the style to get the size I actually want. Again, to my knowledge no other part of Microsoft Word works this way. I thought this might be an effect of having the text in a frame, but I looked at the Format Frame dialog and I don't see any provision for setting scale.
By the way, I observed a further bit of weirdness: the address frame is visible but the return address frame is invisible, even when "show formatting marks" is turned on. This is baffling, and adds further confusion!
Is Microsoft taking any steps to correct these problems?
See Change Envelope Layout by Graham Mayor, MVP.
The methods shown there work in all versions of Word beginning with Word 97 and extending to Word 2024. This includes the desktop application Word from Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
Change the Envelope Address and Envelope Return Address paragraph styles.
Word’s envelope addresses use the Envelope Address and Envelope Return styles. The Font dialog’s “Set as Default” choice can be overridden by those styles or fail to persist when the attached template cannot be updated.
Create an envelope, choose Add to Document instead of printing, and open the Styles pane. Display styles, locate Envelope Address and Envelope Return, then choose Modify for each. Set the font, size, and weight, select “New documents based on this template,” and save. Close Word and accept the prompt to save Normal.dotm, then reopen Word and test an envelope.
If the styles revert, verify that Normal.dotm is writable and Word is not controlled by a template or add-in. Back up customizations before renaming Normal.dotm and allowing Word to recreate it. Office 2019 support ended in October 2025, so verify behavior on a supported release. Printer settings affect placement and feed direction, not the font.
