I love Scrivener. It’s got so many awesome awesome features. But one thing about it makes me want to go on a crazed, Sweeny Todd style hacking spree. The fact that the default font is Courier New. :shudder: I despise Courier New. I believe it should be stricken from fonts everywhere (sadly you can’t delete it from your machine as it is considered a system font).
I have spent HOURS searching for information on how to change this, poring over the Scrivener manual, asking @ScrivenerApp, googling, to no avail. I’d been resorting to changing everything scene by scene, which is an understandable pain in the patootie.
But I finally figured it out on my own.
So I wanted to share here with nice easily searchable terms and a title and SCREENSHOTS because this is not remotely OBVIOUS. First you must go to TOOLS–>Options–>Editor. That will get you to this window. Now see that little random italicized A? Yeah, that’s the button. That’s what they use as their symbol for font. WHY they can’t have a dropdown menu for font like EVERYBODY ELSE, I don’t know.
So click the button. That takes you here. Now that’s perfectly reasonable looking isn’t it? Pick your preferred font.
Now this will only affect NEW stuff. If you want to change the default on old stuff (like, say, all the scenes you laid out for the ENTIRE SECOND HALF of your book the other day) you need to select all of the scenes you want to change and then go here.
That takes you to this window.
At this point you decide what all you want to change. In my case, I just converted font only because everything that I was changing was a new scene. It is my understanding that if you are to run this feature on existing scenes (or other documents), it will preserve font size, alignment, tabs and indents, spacing BUT NOT ANY ITALICS OR OTHER FONT FORMATTING. So use on existing stuff at your peril.
In any event, this is how you change the Editor font in Scrivener to something that makes you less stabbity.
Ooh, I wish you had Scrivener for Mac! The default font for it is Optima, and it’s annoying. I will have to follow your research and see if I can figure it out.
The process is similar in Scrivener for Mac. (Actually, that “A” looks kinda like a standard “Font” button in some programs I’m familiar with.)
…I happen to like Courier New and Optima. Granted, I also am one of the few who likes Times New Roman and (size 11) Verdana and who hates Arial and Helvitica, so I’m odd.
This whole trend toward icons only with no words drives me batshit crazy. I don’t WANT pictures. I want WORDS damn it! I want my nice pretty drop down menu! They say that the icons are supposed to save time, but it doesn’t for me. It takes me twice as long to figure out what button to click because there’s no word!
Does no word show up if you hold your mouse pointer over the icon? Descriptors pop up for me—but again, I’m on a Mac. :/
Apparently it does if you hold it there for a really really long time. I still say just have a drop down box.
Thanks, Kait! I just downloaded Scrivener and I’m sure I’ll need this. I have a lot of learning to do.
Don’t forget to back up your document BEFORE you make a big change like the one you described.
I agree with your rant about icons. What’s obvious to one person may not be obvious to the next. I’ve been known to walk into the wrong restroom when someone used something offbeat to designate which was which.
I actually found that in Scrivener, but I think I found it totally by accident and thought “That’s what Kait was talking about when we were on our trip!” Then I forgot to tell you. *looks sheepish*
Some of the games on my iPad have icons instead of words, and it takes me forever to figure out what they mean sometimes. How hard would it be to include both the icon and the words?
THANK YOU!! This has been driving me INSANE!
Thanks Kait, I spent 30 minutes trying to change the default font then decided to search for a solution instead.
The guy who designed the options ui is a moron.
Awesome! Thanks so much for your sweat and sacrifice on our behalf
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LIKE +1 thanks!! I’ve had Scriv for Windows for a bit but just now getting into more of the special features.
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Hello Kait,
Felt like I helped you as best I could within the word limitation bounds of Twitter:
You: “How do you permanently change the Editor font for all docs in Scrivener for Windows?”
ScrivenerApp: “Hello Kait. You can go to Tools > Options… > Editor to change the default font used for…”
”
“… documents. And then use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style to change offending docs.
You: “FYI, the really important part you’re leaving out is that it’s that random little “A” that gets you to FONT.”
“We Windows folks expect a nice drop down box.”
ScrivenerApp: “Glad you sussed it Kait! Coded from the ground up according to Windows standards by the way.
All the best, DJ.”
The tool tip ‘Show Fonts’ appears as soon as you hover over the problematic “A”. This is all naturally covered in our Scrivener Manual on page 214. Font formatting *is* conserved for any binder documents that you decide to convert to your new font settings. We obviously wouldn’t want new font settings to automatically alter anything you had already written in order to prevent the overwriting of documents with a specific layout.
Glad to hear that you love other aspects of Scrivener, and thank you for spreading news regarding how to change the default editor font.
All the best, David
Scrivener, Literature & Latte
I think it’s just one of those things where when you know what it actually is, it seems totally obvious and you don’t think to mention it. I have this happen all the time with stuff I’m familiar with. And perhaps I misread the bit about the formatting in the manual. I thought it said somewhere something was going to be blitzed. Might’ve been an older version tutorial I was reading online somewhere. I did actually read the bit in the manual on 214 but it still was not obvious to me, as I could not figure out to what the manual was referring once I got to the relevant screen. So I wanted to make something with nice easy screenshots that would show up in a google search for those of us who were having blond moments.
It *is* a really helpful and appreciated Scrivener related blog post! Thank you Kait.
Ok I feel REEEEEEEEALLY stupid after going back for the FIFTH time to look at that page in the manual and it’s like right there…
OH!: The A blended in with the line of the B and the i and the U. >.> That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…
Thank you. You have no idea how much time I’ve wasted trying to figure this out. Also, I agree that Courier New is horrible.
Thank you so much for this! And for having nice, google-friendly, search words. That’s how I found it and it just made my life oh, so much easier!
I was able to find the option shown above. However, it doesn’t let me change anything within that box other than the line spacing. The buttons highlight when I move the cursor over them, but when I click nothing happens.
Don’t know what to tell you. Clicking on the “A” button should bring up another box with fonts.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. You have just saved me hours of work.
Can I just beat Ellie by saying one thousand thank you’s. This has been a complete pain! Working between Linux and Windows machines and using Dropbox to sync there have been other issues to worry about and this is one that has been the proverbial burr under my personal creative saddle!!
One more, 1001 and thanks you’s…
Many thanks. I could not find out how to do this but thanks to Google (to find this page of yours) and to you I now know how.
You rock! I love Scrivener but it’s not always obvious how to use it! THANK YOU!
i just downloaded scrivener onto my new laptop for a novel i’m going to write overseas and without this bit of advice i would have shot blanks instead of explosions of genius each paragraph because courier new doesn’t inspire in the least, so thanks much!
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Thanks so much for figuring this out. This was going to drive me crazy! Otherwise, love Scrivener.
Thank you sooooooo much! You have saved me from so much grief! I have also found Scrivener to be REALLY helpful, but the font WAS such an eyesore… until now!
Thank you! I was pulling my hair out trying to get rid of courier new, too.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I googled how I could do this, and your post was the only one that knew how! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Adding to the slew of thank yous. I found your post while googling a way to change this. You saved me at least two days of fruitless frustration.
You have saved me from a lifetime of stabbing myself in the eye! THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for some time now.
I thought I remembered how to do this before, but that was three computer/operating system wipes ago, so glad I found this! Even when I changed the font for a single document in Scrivener, Courier New would occasionally creep back in, especially if I’m moving text from one document to another. Going to pass this on to my friends who are also using Scrivener!
THANK YOU!!! Why they couldn’t bother to put it were you can change the font on EVERYTHING ELSE in the program I have NO idea. THANK YOU for saving me more time. I wish I’d googled before messing with this stupid thing for half an hour!
LOL Back to WRITING!
Wow … MANY thanks for this. As great as Scrivener is, some things are so convoluted, it makes you think it was a government committee creation.
So here’s another question – how do you get it to print page numbers and a header for specific sections? There are just specific texts that I’d like to print, and have a text (specific text) name + page # on top – just like you might do with a specific Word doc.
Anyway, THANKS!
~Doug
That, I have no idea…
Thanks so much for this. I’ve only just downloaded Scrivener and I share your hatred of Courier New. It’s just…ugly. I wish Scrivener were more user-friendly from the outset. I work in the video games industry and consider myself quite tech savvy so I rather naively thought using Scrivener would be straightforward. I *really* hate reading manuals and try to avoid it as much as possible. Hence, I’d hoped that Scrivener would be intuitive and I could just figure things out as I went along, yet I fell at the first hurdle. I’m starting to think that it might be a long time before I can get to the part where I can do some actual writing, lol.
Thanks – this was driving me nuts too …
I love you!!! Thank you so much for leaving this here for me to find it in Jan of 2013! I even have Scrivener for Dummies and could not figure this out. Your instructions are concise and helped me so much. I can’t stand working in anything but Times New Roman. WOOT! You made my day!!
Hello Kait. I was wondering if you know or if anyone has come across a way to add new fonts to those in Scrivener’s default list. I’d like to type in the editor using an old typewriter font. Any ideas?
No idea. Courier New pretty well is the normal computer version of an old typewriter font.
Ok, well thanks for getting back to me. Maybe I’ll check with Scrivener programmers. Have a great one.
Hello Dan. You can add fonts to Scrivener by adding them to your underlying operating system. This is fairly straightforward using OS X, and I’d presume Windows doesn’t make adding fonts too complex either. This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AIR7_ch9No (chosen at random), shows you how simple the process is. I hope that helps.
All the best, David
Scrivener, Literature & Latte
Thanks David! I’m on it. Now if I can just find a typewriter sound effect to match the font when I type it…
Thanks for this tip as I was getting frustrated trying to figure out how to change the default without it reverting back with every new note. Thanks again!
I love you so much right now lol thank you!
You’ve made my day – the next thing I have to figure out is how to subscribe to you blog – thanks from an old redneck.
Thanks Kait – default font problem solved. In the bad old days it used to be – find problem, wrestle with problem, solve problem. Now it’s more like – find problem, google problem, find someone who’d actually done the work to solve problem (YOU!), steal solution. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or if it’s slowly destroying my work ethic … Nice blog.
I was going for exactly this–I couldn’t figure out why I could change every font BUT the default writing font!! I like Calibri as it’s easy on my eyes, and I have been changing every single document one at a time. UNTIL NOW!
Thank you!!
Thank you SO MUCH! I just figured out how to change all the files in your binder at once:
If you select all of the files in the binder like you would in a regular windows folder (click the top one, hold down shift, click the last one and they all become highlighted), you can then reformat all the files at once the same way you described. I’m running 1.0.2. Sorry if this has been posted already. I did a quick scan of the comments so I may have missed it.
Thanks for this! I just spent about a half hour fiddling with every other font setting in the program after my recent reinstall and I couldn’t remember how to find the only one I was looking for. The sad part is that I’m sure that if I ever need another font change I’ll end up googling for this post again, because I can’t think of any scenario where I’d interpret a pale blue “A” as signifier for font options.
Down with pictoral menus, I say!
You save my life. Been searching for this. Copy paste from web, and font is hard to change. Your suggestion help me out. thanks
Thank you! I stared at that very screen, sure that font was there SOMEWHERE.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I will now put down the dull spoon with which I was about to dig my own eyes out. Courier is from hell, which is why the publishing industry insists upon it for all their manuscripts.
You are a rockstar! I just started using Scrivener and this is the first thing I wanted to customize about it. HATE courier font. If I wanted a typewriter I wouldn’t be writing on my computer.. I tried figuring this out on my own and you just saved me a bunch of frustration and time. Thanks!