Dear Esoteric,
The short answer to your question is that you can't. To the
frustration of many Windows users, WordPad has no ability to set a
default font. I'll refer you to an article mentioning this
frustration:
"Another feature lacking in WordPad is the ability to permanently
change the default font."
http://www.nctimes.net/news/2002/20020407/61710.html
However, you can create a template file to do this, and hopefully this
will suffice for your purposes:
Open a new document in WordPad, go to where you wish to start typing,
and type a space. Highlight this space by left-clicking and dragging
over that space with your mouse. Apply any desired typeface,
alignment, size and other settings you wish to have as your default.
Click File, Save As, and then save the file, perhaps naming it
something like "Template". And Click Save.
Now click File, Save As, again. This time right-click the file you
just saved and select properties from the dialog box. Check the
"Read-only" box, and click Ok. Now click Cancel in the Save As box.
Checking read-only means that the file won't be saved over by
accident.
And finally, right-click on the start button on the bottom left of
your desktop and choose "Open". Click through the menu until you get
to the icon that you use to open WordPad (you will probably have to
click on "Programs" and then "Accessories", unless you changed the
Windows default). Right-click on the Wordpad icon and left-click on
properties. Select the short-cut tab, and click in the box that says
"Target". Make sure you go to the very end of the text already
entered in that box (click the End button to be sure) and then click
there to make sure the rest of the line is no longer highlighted.
Type a space then the path to the file you just created in quotation
marks. When you're done, the target box should have the already
existing line to the wordpad program file, and the path to the
document you saved, both enclosed in quotation marks. It might look
like this:
"C:\Program Files\Accessories\wordpad.exe" "C:\My
Documents\Template.doc"
Although your path and filename might be different. Click Ok, and you
should be done. Now when you load WordPad from that icon in the start
menu, it will load this template file, and because it is read-only
when you hit save it will ask you to rename the file.
Let me know if you have any problems!
Regards,
Torq
Start WordPad the Way You Want
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