Relief for Tired QuickBooks Eyes
As I get older I find that my eyesight, which didn’t start off all that great, is declining. Larger monitors help, but they tend to crowd in more information rather than make the text larger. I prefer to set larger font sizes in the programs I use. Today I’ll give you a tip on how to make some adjustments in QuickBooks.
Please note that this isn’t a perfect solution, and that you should use caution when making these changes. I’m using the 2008 release for this, and there could be variations in other years of product.
What we are going to do is to edit a configuration file named “QBW.INI”. This contains a number of settings, and you should be careful to only change those that you are absolutely sure about. BE CAREFUL!
Finding and Editing QBW.INI
There are several ways of doing this, I’ll use the simplest. Run QuickBooks and open a company file. Press the F2 key, and you will see a window similar to the following:
Lots of interesting information here (particularly the list information box on the right), but that’s a discussion for another day.
When this window is open, press the F3 key, and you will see the following:
Select the Open File tab, scroll down the file list and click on QBW.INI, and click the Open File button.
This should open the file with Windows Notepad, as it is a simple text file. Your file will probably vary from what I’m showing here, but it will be close.
DO NOT change anything that you aren’t sure about!
You should see a line that says “[Fonts]“, near the top. If you do not, you can add it in the location we show here. In the “Fonts” section, before the next line that starts with a square bracket, add two lines exactly as follows:
FontName=Arial
FontSize=12
Select File and then Exit and tell the program to save the file.
Exit QuickBooks, then restart it. Many but not All fonts will be changed. If you don’t like the results you can follow the same procedure and just delete the lines we added.
Changed Appearance
Here are some “before” and “after” screen shots.
As you can see, some of the fonts have changed, others have not. In some cases you may find that a window becomes hard to work when the fonts are larger.
It isn’t a perfect solution (we often seem to be saying that with QuickBooks), but for some people it can help.
Donna Rodriguez | Sep 28, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for this tip! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. I had to adjust and rearrange the windows on my Home Page a little, but it works GREAT – my old tired eyes thank you!
Tammy | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I’ve been looking for this for four years. I’ve had eye surgery and a lot of eye problems and struggled with working with Quickbooks item list. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge!!!!!!!!!!
Debbie Brookham | Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
AWESOME!!!Thank you
Sonya | Apr 23, 2009 | Reply
What is the line to make the text bold?
Thanks!
Charlie | Apr 23, 2009 | Reply
Sonya, I don’t believe that you can set the attributes like that (although I could be mistaken). You could play with using a bolder font if you have one installed in your computer, like Arial Bold or Arial Black. I’ve not tried that specifically.
Angee | Aug 11, 2009 | Reply
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Cindhi | Sep 7, 2009 | Reply
That SO worked. Thank you.
belinda | Oct 28, 2009 | Reply
Hello,
This is exactly what I am after, the only problem is that I am running QuickBooks on Parallel on a Mac!!
When I pressed on F2 nothing happened!!
Can you help me with this as the text is soooo small I can hardly see it!!
Any help would be greatly appreciated, you have no idea!
Thanks,
Belinda
Charlie | Oct 28, 2009 | Reply
Search for the INI file, you should be able to find it. It is just a file in the appropriate folder…
Mattie | Feb 17, 2010 | Reply
My tired eyes are so happy; THANK YOU!!
Mona Bauer | Feb 24, 2010 | Reply
Thank you it worked perfectly!
Heather | Mar 8, 2010 | Reply
Charlie,
Let me know when you’re in town. I’ll buy you a beer. Really, this has helped me so much.
Shame on QuickBooks for not taking Accessibility into mind with their program. There should just be a button you click to enlarge the font, or a thing in the preferences.
Again, Thanks.
Kate Timko | Apr 9, 2010 | Reply
Charlie,
You are the very BEST….it worked like a charm.
Kate
jacquie | Aug 17, 2010 | Reply
HERE IS A DILEMMA. I’M USING QUICKBOOKS ON MY MAC THRU PARALLELS…SO THE F2 KEY DOESN’T WORK..HOW DO I GET TO THE INI FILE THRU PARALLELS? I TRIED ONE WAY THAT I READ ABOUT BUT IT ONLY BROUGHT UP CODE, NOTHING THAT I COULD CHANGE..IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEA, PLEASE HELP. THANKS!
Charlie | Aug 17, 2010 | Reply
Jacquie, an alternate key (in Windows, can’t say in your environment) is to try ctrl-1 to open the info window, then ctrl-2 to open the support window.
In any case, qbw.ini is just a file in a folder – you can find it and edit it with Notepad. I don’t know what version of Windows you are emulating, so the location may vary, but it could be someplace like C:\Users\All Users\Intuit\QuickBooks xxxx, where the “xxxx” is the year of QuickBooks you are using.
Patti | Aug 26, 2010 | Reply
I simply can’t thank you enough for this fabulous tip! I was so unhappy with QB especially after getting Window 7. I was driving myself crazy trying to get a screen resolution to suit me. This has been the perfect solution.
Thank you!