Are you sure that you are looking in the correct location? If the shortcut
isn't working for you, you should be able to display the Styles pane by
clicking the dialog launcher button in the Styles group (of the Home tab).
If you are just changing the font, you can press the Default button in the
Font dialog box, as suggested by Venture. Similarly, the Default button in
the Paragraph dialog box allows you to set the default line spacing,
indents, etc.
--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP
in message