How to Change the Default Formatting Settings in Google Docs

When you first open Google Docs, the default formatting is set to Arial 11-point font, 1.15 line spacing, and standard 1-inch margins all around. While this works fine for some quick documents, it may not be suitable for more formal or professionally formatted pieces. Fortunately, Google Docs makes it easy to customize the default text and paragraph formatting to suit your needs.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to update the default font, font size, line spacing, margins, and paragraph alignment in Google Docs. Once set, these customized defaults will apply automatically each time you create a new document.

Change the Default Font

To start, let’s update that boring Arial font to something more exciting. Here’s how:

1. Open a new Google Docs document.
2. Highlight a section of text and change the font to your preferred font style and size using the options in the top toolbar. For this example, let’s bold the header and set it to 16-point Cambria font.
3. With that text still highlighted, click Format > Paragraph styles > Normal text.
4. Select “Update ‘Normal text’ to match”. This saves your selected Cambria 16-point bold formatting to the Normal text style.
5. Click Format > Paragraph styles > Options > Save as my default styles.

Now when you create new Docs, the default font will automatically be set to Cambria size 16. Easy!

Adjust the Default Line Spacing

While we’re at it, let’s update that line spacing from 1.15 to double spaced:

1. Highlight a section of text in your document.
2. Click Format > Line & paragraph spacing > Double.
3. Again highlight the text, click Format > Paragraph styles > Normal text > Update ‘Normal text’ to match.
4. Click Format > Paragraph styles > Options > Save as my default styles.

Set Default Margins

For formal documents, you may want wider margins than the standard 1-inch. Here’s how to adjust them:

1. Click File > Page setup
2. Change the top, bottom, left, and right margins to your desired widths. For this example, let’s do 1.5 inches.
3. At the top, click Apply to whole document. This sets the new margins throughout.
4. Highlight a section of text, then repeat steps 3-4 listed above in the line spacing section to set these margins as the new default in Google Docs.

Make Text Left Aligned by Default

Using the steps above, you can also set left, center, or right paragraph alignment to be the default. For formal documents, left alignment is most common. Here’s how:

1. Highlight a section of text.
2. Click the Align left icon in the toolbar.
3. Repeat steps 3-4 in the line spacing section to save left alignment as the new default alignment.

See the Results

Now when you create a new Google Doc, all text should automatically have these new default formatting settings:

• Cambria, 16-point font
• Double line spacing
• 1.5 inch margins
• Left aligned paragraphs

Of course you can still override these defaults within any document. But having them pre-populated will save you setup time and effort compared to starting from scratch each time.

Reset Defaults If Needed

If you ever want to revert back to the original Google Docs defaults, simply open a document and click Format > Paragraph styles > Options > Reset styles. Then create a new document to see the change take effect.

Conclusion

Being able to customize Google Docs default text and paragraph formatting makes formatting documents much faster. You skip repetitive steps each time you create a new file.

So if you find yourself manually updating fonts, margins, and line spacing every time you open a new Doc, save yourself the hassle by setting them as defaults instead. Just follow the steps in this article to get your documents formatted perfectly right from the start.

Let me know in the comments if you have any other Google Docs formatting customizations you love! I’m always looking for new ways to save time and make my documents look clean and professional.