Replace Fonts in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Are you stuck with a presentation that uses strange fonts? Or have you inherited slides where you need to change fonts globally? Fortunately, you don’t have to replace fonts, one at a time with each text box, placeholder, or shape. In this tutorial, we will explore how you can replace one font with another, in the entire presentation using PowerPoint 2010:

1. Open an existing presentation. We opened a presentation that uses two fonts, Arial and Baskerville Old Face. To make it easier to follow along, our usage of Arial is colored red, and our usage of Baskerville Old Face is colored blue, as shown in Figure 1, below.
2. 
   Figure 1: Presentation that uses Arial and Baskerville Old Face fonts
2. Within the Home tab of the Ribbon, locate the Replace button and click the down-arrow next to it. From the resultant drop-down menu, select the Replace Fonts option, that you can see in Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Replace Fonts option
3. This brings up the Replace Font dialog box that you can see in Figure 3. Click the down-arrow within the Replace section, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Replace Font dialog box
4. This brings up the list of fonts used in the active presentation, as you can see in Figure 4. From this list, select the font that you want replaced with another. In Figure 4, you can see that we selected the Arial.
5. 
   Figure 4: Font to be replaced selected




What Font Icons Mean?

Do you see the icons in front of the font names in the Replace Font dialog box? What do these icons mean? Learn more in our Identify Font Types in Windows tutorials. And why is it important to know what these icons mean? One reason to identify them is to know whether they can be embedded or not. Only TrueType fonts can be embedded within PowerPoint.
5. Now, click the down-arrow within the With section, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5. From the resultant drop-down menu that includes fonts installed on your system, select the font that you want to replace with. We chose Agency FB as the replacement font.
6. 
   Figure 5: Font selected to replace the existing Font

Why Arial Always Show in the Replace Drop-down List?

You may replace Arial with some other font, or you may have a presentation that does not use Arial at all. Yet, Arial is a stubborn font that refuses to make a graceful exit from the Replace drop-down list! Why? That’s because several PowerPoint templates use Arial for the default bullet symbols, and that’s the reason why you may have to live with Arial refusing to exit!
6. Next, click the Replace button. We similarly changed all instances of Baskerville Old Face to Agency FB. We then clicked the Close button.

Single-Byte or Double-Byte Fonts

While you can replace single-byte fonts with double-byte fonts, you cannot replace the other way around. Learn what single-byte and double-byte mean in our Single and Double-Byte Fonts in PowerPoint page.
7. In Figure 6, below, you can see that both the red and blue colored text containers now no longer use Arial or Baskerville Old Face. They now sport the Agency FB font.
8. 
   Figure 6: Fonts in the presentation changed

Replace Font, and Fonts in Charts

Yes, as you may have found out, the Replace Font feature is completely oblivious of fonts used in charts. This happens for the same reasons why PowerPoint’s spell check ignores charts: all charts are considered as Excel content and PowerPoint just ignores them as far as text matters go!