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A New Sheriff (Default Font) for Microsoft 365

July 18, 2023

It’s been a love hate relationship. Calibri has been the default font for a long time. Some users love it. Some users hate it. As reported by Paul Thurrott, Microsoft has announced a new default font for Microsoft 365 called Aptos. Microsoft’s principal program manager Si Daniels wrote, “For 15 years, our beloved Calibri was Microsoft’s default font and crown keeper of office communications, but our relationship has come to a natural end. We changed. The technology we use every day has changed. And so, our search for the perfect font for higher-resolution screens began. The font needed to have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type. It was exciting at times, but also intimidating.”

Apparently, it takes longer to select a font than it does a new car. Microsoft commissioned five new fonts (Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite) over two years ago. The winner ended up being Bierstadt, which means “beer town.” Consistent with the Microsoft marketing folks renaming things to confuse users (e.g. Microsoft Entra AD), the font name was changed to Aptos. The new font is already being rolled out to subscribers as the default font. The other four commissioned fonts are still available in the font drop-down selection.

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