4 Different Ways to Change Font Style in Microsoft Teams

If you’ve ever sent a long message in Microsoft Teams and wished it looked a little less like a wall of text, you’re not alone. Whether you want to bold a key point, make a heading stand out in a channel post, or just increase the font size for easier reading, Teams offers more formatting options than most people realize.

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through every way you can change the font style in Microsoft Teams — from the basic formatting toolbar to keyboard shortcuts, accessibility settings, and even a handy workaround for when you want more control over how your text looks.

Let’s get into it.

What You Can (and Can’t) Change in Microsoft Teams

Before we start, let me set the right expectations, because this is where a lot of people get confused.

Microsoft Teams does not let you change the default font for the entire app. So if you were hoping to make every message show up in, say, Arial or Georgia by default, that’s not possible right now. Microsoft hasn’t built that feature in yet.

What you can do is:

• Change the font size (Small, Medium, Large) within a message
• Apply bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
• Add text color and highlighting
• Use headings, bullet points, and numbered lists
• Adjust the overall display size of the Teams interface through zoom/accessibility settings

Those last two points are really useful if your goal is readability rather than purely style. Okay, now let’s look at each method one by one.

Change Font Style in Microsoft Teams

Here I will tell you different ways to change font style in Microsoft Teams.

Method 1: Using the Format Toolbar in Teams Chat

This is the main way to change font style in Teams. It works in both chat messages and channel posts.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Open a Chat or go to a Teams channel.
2. Click inside the compose box where you type your message.
3. Look at the bottom of the compose box — you’ll see a small toolbar row. Click the Format button (it looks like an “A” with a pencil icon, or sometimes just says “Format”).
4. This expands the compose box and opens the full formatting toolbar above your text area.
5. Now, before or after typing your text, use the toolbar to format it.

Once that toolbar is open, here’s what you’ll find:

• Font style dropdown — You can pick from options like Calibri, Arial, and Times New Roman
• Font size — Small, Medium, or Large
• Bold (B) — Makes text heavier and more prominent
• Italic (I) — Slants the text slightly for emphasis
• Underline (U) — Adds a line beneath the text
• Strikethrough — Draws a line through the middle of the text
• Highlight — Adds a colored background behind text
• Text color — Changes the color of the text itself
• Headings — H1, H2, H3 for structured posts
• Bullet list and Numbered list
• Quote block
• Code snippet
• Link insertion

Example: Say you’re writing a project update in a channel. You could type the title, select it, set it to H1, and make it Bold. Then write your bullet points below with key items highlighted in yellow. The result looks almost like a mini document inside Teams, way more readable than a block of plain text.

Quick tip: If you want to format text you’ve already typed, just highlight the words first, then click the formatting button you want. It applies instantly.

Method 2: Keyboard Shortcuts for Fast Formatting

If you’re the type who doesn’t want to take your hands off the keyboard every time you want to bold something, good news. Teams supports the same keyboard shortcuts you already use in Word and Outlook.

Here are the ones I use all the time:

Action	Shortcut
Bold	Ctrl + B
Italic	Ctrl + I
Underline	Ctrl + U
Strikethrough	No default shortcut

Here’s how to use them:

• While typing: Press Ctrl + B before you start typing a word, type the word, then press Ctrl + B again to turn bold off.
• On existing text: Select the text you want to format, then press the shortcut.

Example: You’re writing a message quickly and want to highlight one phrase — “meeting is at 3 PM sharp.” Just select “3 PM sharp” and hit Ctrl + B. Done. No mouse needed.

This is probably the fastest way to style text in Teams, and once you build the muscle memory, you’ll use it constantly.

Method 3: Change Font Size in a Message in Teams

Teams gives you three font size options for messages: Small, Medium, and Large. There’s no way to type a custom point size like in Word, but these three cover most use cases.

Here’s how to change it:

1. Open a chat or channel and expand the Format toolbar (as explained in Method 1).
2. Look for the Font Size dropdown in the toolbar; it usually shows options like Small, Medium, Large.
3. Select your preferred size, then type your message.

Alternatively:

1. Type your message first.
2. Select the text.
3. Click the Font Size dropdown and pick the size you want.

When would you use this? I find large text useful when I’m typing a short but important message like a quick reminder or an alert, and I want it to stand out without writing a whole paragraph. Small text works well for footnotes or clarifications at the bottom of a longer message.

Method 4: Copy-Paste from Word or Another Editor (Workaround)

Here’s a little trick that comes in handy when you need more font control than Teams natively offers.

If you’ve written something in Microsoft Word with a specific font, size, and styling, you can copy and paste it directly into Teams. Some of that formatting carries over, including bold, italics, and even some font changes.

This works best when:

• You’re pasting a formatted table or structured content
• You’ve used headers and bullet points in Word
• You want a very specific visual layout that Teams’ built-in toolbar doesn’t easily achieve

How to do it:

1. Write and format your text in Word (or even Notepad++ or another editor).
2. Select all the formatted text and copy it (Ctrl + C).
3. Go to Teams, click in the compose box, and paste (Ctrl + V).
4. Teams will try to preserve as much formatting as it can.

It won’t always be perfect — some things won’t carry over — but for rich text with bold headings and bullet points, it works surprisingly well.

Quick Reference: Formatting Options at a Glance

Here’s a summary of all the methods covered and when to use each one:

Method	Best For	Changes How Others See It?
Format toolbar	Full control over font, size, style	Yes
Keyboard shortcuts	Quick bold/italic/underline while typing	Yes
Font size dropdown	Emphasizing short messages	Yes
Font type dropdown	Changing typeface per message	Yes
Accessibility/Text size settings	Easier reading on your screen	No
Copy-paste from Word	Complex formatting	Partially
Markdown shortcuts	Fast formatting without mouse	Yes

Common Questions People Ask

Final Thoughts

Microsoft Teams provides several formatting options that help make messages more organized and easier to read. In this article, we covered how to change font style, adjust font size, apply text formatting such as bold and italics, use keyboard shortcuts, copy formatted content from Word, and understand the current limitations of font customization in Teams.

These features can help you create clearer and more professional chat messages, channel posts, and meeting conversations.

Also, you may like:

• Make Microsoft Teams Dark Mode
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• Set Microsoft Teams to Record Automatically
• Change Background in Microsoft Teams