How to Increase Font Size of Reading Pane Text in Windows 10 Mail App?

If you are using the built-in and default “Mail” app in Windows 10 to access your email accounts and send/receive emails and you think that the default font size of email text shown in the Reading Pane or Preview Pane is too small to read, this article will help you in increasing the font size and making it readable.

Previously, I was using eM Client, a popular desktop email client software to manage my email accounts and read/reply emails. Since a few days, I noticed that the software was not working well. It became slower and was not syncing emails properly.

So I decided to switch to another email client and after some research, finally I found the built-in “Mail” app of Windows 10 best suiting my requirements. It supports Outlook accounts, Microsoft Exchange and Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) synchronization protocol. It’s really very fast in syncing emails and provides a minimal and clean interface. It also provides 2-lines vertical view in emails list which shows email subject and sender information in 2 separate lines. It was a very important plus point for me.

When I started using Windows 10 Mail app, I realized that the the font size of reading pane/preview pane where the full email text is shown upon selection, was very small. Everything was perfect in Mail app except the reading pane font size. It was very hard to read emails shown in tiny text in reading pane. The text displayed in reading pane was very small.

Following screenshot shows the small text size of reading pane in Windows 10 Mail app:

As the first solution or workaround, I tried the good old CTRL and + shortcut to zoom inside the reading pane and to make the text bigger in reading pane. It helped in increasing the font size of reading pane. I was now satisfied with the increased font size in reading pane.

But it was a temporary workaround. As soon as I switched to another email, the zoom was reset to default and the font size again became smaller. It means Mail app doesn’t remember the zoom level of reading pane. So I have to manually increase font size by pressing CTRL and + keys together every time I selected an email to read it in reading pane. The hotkey shortcut to zoom in inside reading pane was not a permanent solution.

Then I checked Mail app settings and I found “Default Font” section in Settings pane.

I customized and increased the font size using this option but it didn’t change the font size in reading pane. I realized this setting was provided to customize compose email font size. You can change the font size and style of text which you type while composing a new email using this setting.

So it’s really surprising to see that Microsoft has not provided any option or setting to change and customize font size of reading pane text. It’s a very important feature which is missing in Mail app.

At the moment, the only workaround to fix this annoying issue, is to increase system-wide font size. Windows 10 allows users to increase font size using Settings app.

You can increase font size in Windows 10 globally which will also increase the font size in Windows 10 Mail app.

Following tutorial will help you in increasing system font size in Windows 10:

[Tip] How to Change Text Font Size in Windows 10

I hope Microsoft will add this missing functionality to Mail app in future versions/feature updates of Windows 10 and will provide an option to make the font size bigger of reading pane text in Mail app.

Also Check:

[Fix] Something Went Wrong, Error Code: 0x80004005 While Adding New Account in Windows 10 Mail App