If you are struggling with fonts changing when you import a Microsoft Word document into TariffShark, then this article is for you.  What you are experiencing is a designed behavior of Microsoft Word (and probably frustration).

Every Microsoft Word document contains an underlying style named “Normal”.  It forms the basis for the document’s appearance by establishing defaults for such characteristics as font (type face), font size, and paragraph spacing (among many other document characteristics).  Imagine that you have two documents: one is a research paper and the other is the bibliography for the paper.  Ultimately, you plan to merge these documents into a single document, but you find that it’s easier to work with them as separate documents while your research paper takes form. Further, imagine that the research paper’s Normal style names Times New Roman as the default font and the bibliography’s Normal style uses Courier New.

When you bring the two documents together, it would be strange to use different fonts (and your professor may even deduct points).  Microsoft Word understands this and tries to be smart when merging documents.  For example, if you copied the content of your bibliography and pasted it to the end of the research paper, the Courier New bibliography would appear as Times New Roman in the research paper document.  Similarly, if you copied the research paper and pasted it to the top of the bibliography, the Times New Roman research paper would appear as Courier New in the bibliography document.  Microsoft Word is essentially making the content that you paste into a document “blend in”.

So, what does this have to do with TariffShark?

Our customers sometimes get tariff content from outside parties who provide the content within Microsoft Word documents.  If a source Word document defines a different default font than what TariffShark defines in the Document Layout, when the content is brought into TariffShark, the content can adopt the default font from the Document Layout and take on a very different appearance.  If this isn’t what you intend, one solution is to create a new Document Layout whose Normal style establishes the correct default font.

If you have any questions relating to TariffShark’s Document Layouts and Microsoft Word’s Normal style, we will do our best to answer them.  Post your questions and comments below or contact TariffShark Support.