How do I get Outlook 2003 to display messages in my own font?

[Scott Melendez]

When I get messages, Outlook almost always displays them in Helv (which is
not installed on my system, far as I can tell). Even with the option set to
³Always use my fonts², most messages get rendered in Helv or Tms Rmn, which
are bitmapped fonts that look terrible).

Why can¹t Outlook display messages how I want them??

 

[Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]]

Are they HTML messages? I think the fonts in those override other font
settings.

 

[Scott Melendez]

Well that¹s kind of curious, which I posted a separate thread. If I Reply or
Forward these messages, they are formatted as Outlook Rich Text. In the
Reading Pane most of these messages appear in that Helv font (where is that
*@! Font located, anyway? I HATE it!).

Properly formatted HTML messages work fine.

 

[jvangorp]

Tweaking Windows font substitution works

I'm not sure if folks experiencing incorrect rendering of the Helv font in the Outlook 2003 Reading Pane will see this post, but I thought I'd share how I solved this problem.

While searching for a solution specifically for Outlook 2003, I found several general articles about "font substitution". There is a Windows Registry setting that controls such substitution, and by default Helv is substituted with MS Sans Serif. I'm not certain, but I'm guessing that MS Sans Serif doesn't anti-alias properly at the small size used by the Reading Pane. I simply changed the registry key for Helv=MS Sans Serif to Helv=Arial and voila! - beautifully rendered text in the Reading Pane. You could probably use fonts other than Arial in this substitution.

Here is the registry key for font substitutions: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes. This worked for my Windows XP Pro system. The original posting I found with this info is at this URL:

http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/03/20/399322.aspx

If the link is broken, trying searching for "windows font substitution" using your favourite search engine.