Problem: I often need to figure out which font to use and want to preview the different styles on a chart or SmartArt graphic.
Strategy: The Live Preview feature in Excel makes choosing from a gallery very easy. You just select a range in Excel and then open the Font dropdown. When you hover over a font name in the list, Excel will show you the selection in that font.
- Hover over a font to see a preview.
Note that the change is not permanent in the worksheet. You can continue hovering over new fonts, and Excel will show you a preview of the font.
When you find a font that looks good, you can click the font name to select it. Excel will then apply the font to the selected range.
Additional Details: Many galleries besides the Font dropdown offer Live Preview. It is likely that even more galleries will inherit this feature in future versions of Excel.
Gotcha: Live Preview is memory intensive. You can turn off the feature if your computer doesn't have the processing power to handle it. Select File, Options, General, Enable Live Preview.