3 Ways to Change the Font in Google Sheets

Do you want to change the font in your Google Sheets? This post is going to show you all the ways you can change the font in Google Sheets.

By changing the font in your Google Sheets, you can make your document more visually appealing and easier to read.

Most Google products come with a default font. Google Sheets use Arial as the default font.

Thankfully, Google Sheets provide a lot of options for customizing the font. This is great since you might have a favorite font you wish to use almost every time.

Throughout this article, you will learn different ways of changing the font in Google Sheets. Follow our simple guide on how to change the font in your Google Sheets today!

Change the Font with the Toolbar

if you want to change the font in Google Sheets, changing it through the Toolbar is the best possible way to get it done.

The Toolbar is a ribbon placed below the menubar and allows you to quickly do tasks such as Undo, Redo, Increase or Decrease Decimals, Warp Text, etc.

In the Font section, you will see the default font is set to be Arial in Google Sheets.

Follow these steps to change the font in Google Sheets.

  1. Select the cells whose font you wish to change. You can press Ctrl + A to select the entire sheet if you want to change the font for all cells.
  2. Click on the Font dropdown menu in the Toolbar.
  3. Select your font of choice.

When you select a font, it will be applied to your selected cells.

💡 Tip: You can also change the font size from the toolbar for added customization.

In this example, cells A1:A3 have been selected and the Comic Sans MS font has been applied. You are free to use any font of your choice.

Just a couple of clicks and bingo! You have changed the font of your Google Sheet.

💡 Tip: If you want to apply the same font for all of your cells, select all of the cells by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A, then change the font using the Toolbar.

📝 Note: Be aware that the font change you made is only implemented on the active sheet. As soon as you add a new sheet, it will have the default Arial font.

Change the Default Font with a Custom Theme

A new introduction to Google Sheets is the Themes feature.

They help users to customize the appearance of their Google Sheets. The themes are prebuilt and get applied to all of the data your sheets hold including objects such as tables, charts, and pivot tables.

This way, your entire report will get a sense of uniformity.

You can change the appearance of a Custom Theme such as the font, font size, and colors in the theme.

Follow these steps to change the default font through Custom Themes in Google Sheets.

  1. Go to the Format menu to see all the available formatting options.
  2. Select the Theme option from the menu. This is the option associated with the custom themes.

This will open up the Themes window on the extreme right-hand side of the sheet showing the current theme set as Standard.

It also provides you with a list of other themes that can be used and applied to the current sheet. You can scroll down and select any of them.

In this example, we are going to use the Standard theme only.

  1. Click on the green button named Customize at the top of the window.

This will allow you to apply customizations within the theme itself. There are multiple options to customize such as the Font, Text Color, Chart Options, Field Color, etc. These can all be changed and customized.

  1. Click on the Font dropdown and select the font of your choice.

In this example, Comic Sans MS has been chosen.

  1. Press the Done button at the top of the Themes window once you have selected a new font.

This will save the changes to the theme.

Bingo! Your sheet font now is formatted as a Comic Sans MS.

That’s another very useful way of changing the font in Google Sheets.

📝 Note: If you change the font in the theme, it will remain for all subsequent sheets you add. It becomes the default for the entire workbook.

Change the Default Font with Apps Script

With App Scripts, you can automate almost any task in Google Sheets.

Check out this article The Beginners Guide to Apps Scripts in Google Sheets to learn everything a beginner should know about the tool and much more.

You can actually write a script that can change the font in your sheet. You could select the entire sheet or a few ranges and change the font.

Go to the Extensions menu and select the Apps Script option. This will launch the script editor interface in a new window.

Copy and paste the code mentioned below to the coding interface of the Apps Script to change the font of cell A1:A3.

function ChangeFont() {
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var range = ss.getRangeList(["A1:A3"]);
  range.setFontFamily("Comic Sans MS");
}

Explanation

  • The first line of code defines the function that can hold the code you write to automate the stuff. You can name it anything you wish but giving a descriptive name is the best practice in general. This script has been named ChangeFont() using the function keyword.
  • The SpreadasheetApp.getActiveSheet() method allows you to get the active spreadsheet from the workbook. You can also use the getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName() method to restrict the system to a sheet with a specific name. The result is stored in a variable named ss.
  • The getRangeList() method allows you to get a specific range in this case it is A1:A3. The result is stored in the variable named range.
  • Finally, you call the setFontFamily() method on the range selected and then apply the font "Comic Sans MS" to A1:A3.

If you want to apply the font to the entire sheet, make the change in the code line where the range variable is defined. Change the line of code to the following.

var range = sheet.getRange(1, 1, sheet.getMaxRows(), sheet.getMaxColumns()).activate();

Everything else remains the same. By setting the column and rows to the max, you will be able to set the font for the entire sheet.

Click on the Run icon on the Horizontal Toolbar in the Apps Script environment.

This will execute the code and you will also see the Execution log that shows you the status of the code running. Once the execution is complete, you can see that the font is now changed to Comic Sans MS.

Feel free to replace the Comic Sans MS with any other font name of your choice inside the Apps Script code and you will see the font is applied to the sheet or range.

Conclusions

Changing font is a common task while working with Google Sheets and there are several ways to accomplish this.

The simplest way of changing the font on the current sheet is through the Toolbar. But if you add another sheet, you will see that the default font is still Arial.

If you want to change the font for the entire workbook, including any sheet you add to the workbook later you can leverage the Theme feature.

You can write a custom script of your own that can change the font of a selection or entire sheet based on the range you specify through Apps Script.

These are all the ways that allow you to change the font in Google Sheets. Do you know any other method? Let me know in the comments!

About the Author

Lalit Salunkhe

Lalit Salunkhe

Lalit is a data analyst with diverse skills and experience in data mining and analysis. He has a M.Sc. in Statistics from one of the top institutes in Maharashtra. Lalit is also a Google Sheets expert and enjoys teaching others how to use Google Sheets to solve their data problems.

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