FIX: Incredibly Small Font in Outlook When Composing Emails

I had the same problem when replying to or forwarding an email. The original font would get very small. I tried the Zoom fix with my IT guy over my shoulder but it didn’t work.
What did work is: from the Outlook 2016 Home tab click on the drop down in Quick Steps. In the Manage Quick Steps box click on Reset to Defaults in the lower left corner. Click OK and that solved it for me! Hope this helps. Jan

Jan’s solution below is the right one. Use the search setting in Outlook to locate the “Manage Quick Steps” and then reset it. all problems go away.

Thanks! Solved my issue.

Tried resetting to defaults but it did not help. Any other suggestions? I know I hit some combination of keys that caused the view to change (even though it’s set at 100% and increasing it to even 200% just makes the font wider, not larger, and even more unreadable). Thanks.

I had this same problem and it was soooo annoying!!!!!!!!!! I use outlook 2013- tried the MESSAGE TAB, CLICKED ZOOM, CLICKED 100% THEN OK AND IT SAVED. This worked!!! YAY! Thanks for the tip!!

Go to View
>View Settings (usually on left top side)
>Other Settings
>Column Font, Row Font, & Message preview font – change to desired pt.
Sometimes, for some reason, usually after running malware or antivirus, it will default to 8pt. Hope this helps

Thank you very much for this clear explanation. I don’t know what I did to shrink the size in the first place, and I am very appreciative of this fix.

It worked . Thank you. One thing I’d like to add: you have to start typing for the zoom to become active. It took me a while to figure that out.

In message tab, start composing an email and write a few words, then select ‘format text’. That will highlight ‘zoom’ and allow you to click on it, then select ‘100%’. It finally worked after 90 minutes of searching for an answer… Joe D is correct, only I didn’t understand how to make ‘zoom’ become active..

Thanks! This worked perfectly and solved this ongoing problem I had just sort of accepted.

Thank you – I was almost going to buy a magnifying glass to read my emails!

Thank you. Had several days of searching, then found your solution- simply set out, easy to follow and effective. Brilliant.

Spent several day stressing over this. Found your instructions today and withing minutes the issue was resolved. Thank you for a clear, simply laid out and effective guide. Brilliant.

Thank you.

Thanks for the tip! It worked. Youre amazing! Helped me fix the issue without IT.

thanks!!

Thank you so much! This issue has been plaguing me for over a week and I consider myself to be fairly comfortable using Outlook. Now I wish I knew what triggered it!

Thank you so much. This was driving me crazy!!!!!!

hold down Ctrl, while holding key down, use mouse scroll wheel to Zoom text to desired size. After searching everywhere and wading through all the MS chaos, stumbled across this but can’t remember where and sorry I can’t find it now to give creds. Glad it works for me, hope it does for others with this irritating, obnoxious issue.

Having the shrunk font issue with Outlook 2013 … can compose in regular size font …. though reciepient gets a message in very small font …. also, there is no button to save the zoom % when I go to zoom and change to 200%…….

Just had this same problem on an M2 MBA with the latest Outlook. Thank you!

For some reason the Zoom was set to 10% lol.

This started happening to me a couple of weeks ago. So glad I found this! Thank you!!!