I had a Word document with extra font formatting buried in it. The primary font for the entire document was incorporated properly, but when I converted the file to PDF, the PDF properties kept referencing a second font. Somewhere a rogue font was formatting sections of my Microsoft Word file.
I dug through all the sections of the Word file and found a few references to this other font, but I couldn’t seem to eliminate it from the document. I was on the verge of tearing my hair out, when I realized, Find and Replace allows you to search for and replace fonts throughout your Word .doc and .docx files.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t care about an invisible font in a Word document, but it was preventing me from uploading the PDF I created into a print on demand service because this random font wasn’t actually embedded in the document even though it showed up in the PDF. Read on to see how I solved the problem.
Note: It’s worth mentioning that if you want to replace font formatting in a Word document, you need to install the app on your Windows or macOS computer. This will not work in the browser.
First pull up the Advanced Find and Replace window in Microsoft Word, then start building your Font replacement. This is located in the Edit menu under Find.
At the bottom of the Advanced Find and Replace windows, click the Format button and choose Font.
With the Font window open, choose the font you want to remove from your Word document. next make sure all the check boxes in the effects section have a blue square inside them, so that Word will search everything.
Back in the Replace window, in the Find what section, use the button labelled Special at the bottom of the window to have Word look for things like Paragraph Mark, Any Character, White Space and other aspects that may be improperly formatted. Any Character is a good choice for this because it will locate letters and punctuation.
You may need to cycle through these and click the Find Next button in order to find the rogue font in your document. Once you have located something with the incorrect formatting, you can either manually change it, or you can use the Replace with tool to choose an alternate font.
Once Find next no longer returns results, the font is fully replaced.
If you ever need additional fonts to use in Word, check out 1001 Fonts.
