Bug in Excel 2010?

[GRoston]

For my workbook, I have defined the default font to be 11 pt Calibri. However, when I select a row (or column) and select Clear Formats, the cells are reformatted to 10 pt Arial. To me, this seems like a bug. Am I missing something?

 

[Ranger4]

How have you set the default font. You can set the Default Font by opening Excel, select file & then Options & under General there is a Sub Heading "When Creating new Workbooks" & there you will see "Use this as the default font". Then you can use the drop down list to select the font & size. If you change this it will only operate on any new workbooks that you create. Any previous ones will remain in the font that was originally used.
I use Excel 2013 so this info comes from that, but I think Excel 2010 is the same or very similar.

 

[GRoston]

Ranger4,

Thanks for the reply. I take it, based on your comment, that once a workbook is created, it is not possible to change the default font? While technically this would not be a bug, it is a a rather poor design decision.

 

[Ranger4]

Ranger4,

Thanks for the reply. I take it, based on your comment, that once a workbook is created, it is not possible to change the default font? While technically this would not be a bug, it is a a rather poor design decision.

No I did not mean it that way. Once you have changed the default font, any workbook created after that should have the new font, but older workbooks, that is ones created before resetting the default font will remain in the original font.

To change the font on older ones, open it & select all & click on the font & size desired & this should update the whole worksheet. Then be sure to select save when closing.

 

[GRoston]

Ranger4,

You are correct - one can select the entire worksheet and update the font. The problem arises if you do a 'Clear Formats' or 'Clear All'. In this case, the original default font is used instead of the desired font.

 

[Ranger4]

GRoston,

Yes that certainly could be the case. I assume what's happening there is that it is reverting to the font that was used when the workbook was originally created. This is not the same as creating a new workbook, it is just bringing that workbook back to its original state, as it would have been when first set up.
Is this a major problem for you?. Do you need to "Clear formats" or "Clear all" very often?.

 

[GRoston]

Major problem - no. Annoyance - most definitely.

 

[Ranger4]

I can understand your irritation, but I really can't see away around it.

 

[GRoston]

I took a quick stab at editing the XML files, but that got me no place. Would have to study this in more detail to figure it out. There must be some way to accomplish this as the default is clearly stored in the file and the file is merely a bunch of XML.