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MICROSOFT 365

By Peter Deegan

Whenever you start a new document by clicking “Blank” (or “New”) in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook, you’re almost certainly using Microsoft’s default templates and fonts.

Microsoft has started pushing changes to those starting “blanks” for Microsoft 365 in a very special way that adds little compatibility traps for Office 2021/2019 as well as earlier versions.

You’ve probably heard about the change in default templates and the arrival of the new Aptos font family. What I’ll explain here is the true scope of those changes and how they are quite different from past Office template and font changes.

In September, all Microsoft 365 apps, Word 365, Excel 365, PowerPoint 365, and emails with Outlook 365 will get new default templates that will be applied to new, blank documents. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. New blank buttons in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook

The default template changes are in four parts, not the three Microsoft names.

A new font family is used in all those templates, limited to Microsoft 365 apps only.

A new default color scheme matches modern readability and accessibility standards. Most noticeably, yellow from the old theme has been replaced with purple. (Figure 2).

Figure 2. New default color scheme for Microsoft 365

Lines are thicker. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3. More visible default lines are in Microsoft 365.

Styles are changing to match the new font and colors. The new Normal and Heading styles for Word 365 are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Word 365’s new styles, shown with samples and settings.

Changes in Office templates have happened before, but only when a new version of Office is installed. Although the “C” family of fonts (Calibri, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, and Corbel) was added to Windows Vista and Office 2007, the default templates were changed and installed by default with Office 2013.

This time, the change is being pushed to Microsoft 365 apps; the user cannot opt out. Here’s the really big news: the new default font family, Aptos, is available only to Microsoft 365 apps. The fonts are not installed in Windows/Mac for other programs to use. Obviously, that means font substitution problems when sharing files with other, non-Microsoft 365 users.

Aptos is an entirely new font family that’s installed in a special way so it appears only in Microsoft 365 apps. As we’ll see, that means any document or email with Aptos fonts that you share will look a little different for anyone without Microsoft 365.

Aptos has many options: Light, Display, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold, Narrow, Serif, and Mono (Figure 5).

Figure 5. The full range of Aptos fonts, as shown in Word for Mac’s superior font menu

The two main typefaces are Aptos (for body text) and Aptos Display (for headlines). See Figure 6.

Figure 6. Aptos and Aptos Display

Aptos Narrow is used in the new Excel 365 template to fit more text into each cell while also ensuring that numbers line up vertically (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Aptos Narrow font for Excel worksheets

There are other Aptos faces: Black and ExtraBold for titles, plus Light and SemiBold.

All Aptos fonts are sans-serif except two, Serif and Mono (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Aptos Serif and Aptos Mono

Aptos Serif is an alternative to Aptos for body text because the little “serif” at the end of a line makes text easier to read. Other long-standing serif fonts are Times New Roman and Georgia.

Aptos Mono is a fixed width font for code, much like Courier New, Consolas, or JetBrains Mono.

Aptos and Aptos Display are fairly similar to their predecessors, Calibri and Calibri Light. Over at office-watch.com, I’ve made sliders to easily compare each body and headline font.

New and old Office font – side-by-side comparison shows that the two body fonts Aptos and Calibri are much the same, but Calibri letterforms take up about 6% less horizontal space than the same text using Aptos.

With Heading fonts in Office, new and old side-by-side comparison, you can see that Aptos Display has thicker strokes/lines than Calibri Light.

For a long time, fonts were installed in the operating system and available to all programs. Microsoft has changed that, twice, in recent years. Moreover, fonts can be installed from the Microsoft Store or downloaded to Office software only as “cloud fonts.”

When viewing installed fonts using settings in Windows or macOS, the Office cloud fonts are not shown. Aptos fonts are cloud fonts, available only to Microsoft 365 apps. The core fonts (Aptos and Aptos Display) are downloaded (pushed) automatically. The others are installed when requested: look for the little cloud-plus-arrow icon.

Fonts are now stored in three places in Windows. The first, and oldest, is the traditional fonts folder, \Windows\Fonts\. Fonts installed from the Microsoft Store are saved in \Program Files\WindowsApps\. Fonts from both these locations are visible when examined in Windows Settings under Personalization | Fonts. Store fonts are not displayed in the Fonts section of the old Control panel.

The Office cloud fonts? They are saved here:

None of the Office cloud fonts, including Aptos, appears in the Windows or Mac font settings. See Figure 9.

Figure 9. The fonts list in both Windows (left) and Mac (right) does not show Aptos or other Office cloud fonts.

The Aptos fonts are available only to Microsoft 365 customers. No one else can get them, not even Office 2021 or Office 2019 licensees. Any documents, sheets, slides, or emails with Aptos fonts that are shared or sent won’t appear the same on other computers.

Enter the world of font substitution, where software will choose another font if the nominated font in a document isn’t available on that computer. If you share a document with Aptos font formatting, a PC without Microsoft 365 will automatically select another font.

Other versions of Office will probably use Calibri as the font substitute for Aptos. I say “probably” because no specific alternatives are nominated. The so-called “font stack” will consist of Aptos first, and then only the generic font “sans serif.” If Aptos is not available, the app will then try sans serif, which it can interpret as it sees fit. It’s up to the app to decide. In many cases, the visible difference will be small. However, if formatting is very tight, text lines may wrap differently.

Happily, Aptos fonts can be embedded in Word documents or PowerPoint slides to ensure the look is consistent. Go to File | Options | Save | Preserve Fidelity when sharing this document | Embed fonts in the file (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Font-embedding setting in Word and PowerPoint

Excel doesn’t have a font-embedding option. Outlook emails using Aptos fonts will probably use Calibri on other email clients.

All the previous Office settings are still in each app, just saved under the name “Office 2013-2022.” An example is Design | Fonts (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Previous Office defaults appear on menus.

Aptos is a nice and complete font family, but making it exclusively available to Microsoft 365 customers is pure Microsoft greed. Limiting primary font access is just another way for Redmond to push organizations to buy only “subscription” Office instead of using perpetual license Office 2021 or 2019. The company doesn’t seem care about the font-compatibility troubles that it’ll cause customers.

Join the conversation! Your questions, comments, and feedback about this topic are always welcome in our forums!

Peter Deegan is the author of Windows 11 for Microsoft Office Users, Microsoft 365 for Windows: Straight Talk, Eye-Catching Signs with Word, Christmas Cheer with Office, and others. He is the co-founder and editor in chief of the Office Watch site and newsletters since they started in 1996.

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