# IE Font Size change

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 25, 2003, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548 "2003-08-25T17:11:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548/1 "2003-08-25T17:11:21Z")

</div>

Last night I was cleaning up my disks and did a defrag, compressed some files, and deleted others. When I rebooted the machine my default font size in IE is now smaller. It’s the same font, just a different size.

Under Tools-\>Internet Options-\>General-\>Fonts I can change the default font, but can’t find any place to give a default size.

This only happens on pages that don’t specify a font size, such as in most of the SDMB. The compose thread text boxes are fine, for example, but the text for the check boxes below displays roughly two sizes smaller.

Any help?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548/2 "2003-08-25T17:54:33Z")

</div>

Did you look under View-\>Text Size\>Largest/Larger/Medium/Smaller/Smallest?

I’ll bet you’re on ‘Smallest’.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548/3 "2003-08-25T18:22:38Z")

</div>

A common cause of this is a little-known IE shortcut: Hold down Ctrl+mouse scrollwheel.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![KenGr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@KenGr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KenGr)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548/4 "2003-08-26T01:08:09Z")

</div>

An interesting point on the mouse wheel trick. It works on some web pages and not others. Why? It depends on how the page is coded and the range of fonts. It will increase or decrease the font sizes only within the available range. If you use both “largest” and “smallest” fonts on a page, the wheel no longer has an effect.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ie-font-size-change/197548/5 "2003-08-26T03:42:57Z")

</div>

Yup, fixed me right up. I must have done the mouse scroll wheel trick at some point and didn’t notice. Feel like an idiot, but my problem is solved, thanks all.