Changing the Windows Sticky Notes font
It is the Year of Our Lord 2013. There are bladeless fans, self-driving cars, and computers that diagnose cancer. There is no way of changing the font on Sticky Notes in Windows. It is the best of times; it is the worst of times.
Here are three workarounds to save yourself the agony of having Segoe Print compromise your ability to hold your breakfast down.
1. Excommunicate Segoe Print.
Delete it outright from the Fonts folder and Sticky Notes will be forced to use MS Sans Serif. If it refuses to go, expel it thusly.
2. In case you enjoy a more elegant way of handling your affairs, tweak the registry, which is not unlike being able to modify your computer’s gene expression.
Click ‘Start’, type ‘regedit.exe’, and hit Enter. Then abseil down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > Fonts.
Here, find ‘Segoe Print (True Type)’ and ‘Segoe Print Bold (True Type)’. Double-click each in turn and replace the font’s value (fonts, like Time Lords and Tolkien’s Dwarves, have secret names) with that of another. You can find these names by clicking the font you want. For example, Arial would be ‘arial.ttf’, and Times New Roman ‘times.ttf’.
Click ‘Start’, type ‘regedit.exe’, and hit Enter. Then abseil down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > Fonts.
Here, find ‘Segoe Print (True Type)’ and ‘Segoe Print Bold (True Type)’. Double-click each in turn and replace the font’s value (fonts, like Time Lords and Tolkien’s Dwarves, have secret names) with that of another. You can find these names by clicking the font you want. For example, Arial would be ‘arial.ttf’, and Times New Roman ‘times.ttf’.
The computer essentially looks at a location labelled ‘Segoe Print’ and trusts the font at that location to be the real Segoe Print. Switching it around tricks the computer to thinking it’s Segoe Print. It’s ... sort of mean and might lead the computer to develop trust issues later in life, actually, now that I think about it. : (
3. If you are on a computer where you have no admin privileges whatsoever (at work, for example) consider using Outlook’s in-built Notes feature.
A note created in Outlook can be dragged onto the desktop, and made to open at start-up by adding a shortcut to it in C: > Users > DickGumshoe > AppData > Roaming > Microsoft > Windows > Start Menu > Programs > Startup, where DickGumshoe is your user name.
As long as Outlook is open (and starts up with the system), the note will also start up and be displayed on the desktop the same as a Sticky Note.
A note created in Outlook can be dragged onto the desktop, and made to open at start-up by adding a shortcut to it in C: > Users > DickGumshoe > AppData > Roaming > Microsoft > Windows > Start Menu > Programs > Startup, where DickGumshoe is your user name.
As long as Outlook is open (and starts up with the system), the note will also start up and be displayed on the desktop the same as a Sticky Note.
