Tools: Changing Powerpoint default font?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

The easiest way to change the default font for PowerPoint presentations
doesn't really change the default font, but it comes close: create a
template whose text fields are formatted with the desired font, and open
that template whenever you want to create a new presentation. You can apply
that template style to any open presentation through the Format menu.

The kludgiest way to do it would be to rename the desired default font and
all its support files (say, Arial) to "Times Roman". That would probably
work just fine, because when PowerPoint asks for Times Roman, it gets Arial,
but then you'd have to sacrifice Times Roman for all of your system, and
there'd be all kinds of surprises if you ever sent files to others. Plus,
you'd have to reprogram the part of your brain that works with fonts.
("Yeah, I know it's Times Roman, but it's really Arial. So when I want Times
Roman, I really need to pick... hmmm... just which font do I really pick?)
But that should work, albeit awkwardly.

I'd bet that someone skilled with RegEdit could hack the Windows registry to
find and modify the PowrPoint defaults stored there, but I won't bet that
Microsoft was considerate enough to put the font choice among these
defaults.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer