Hello.
I wanted to change my font through my whole book to Helvetica.
When I select helvetica bold 20 as the setting for the title it acts as if it has saved it but then when I go into the document the setting for title shows helvetica bold 28.
Body gets changed from helvetica 10 regular to helvetica 12 bold every time.
Block quotes also act erratically.
I have tried changing project preferences but they won’t change from these settings either. Apparently I have missed changing the global fonts somewhere but after spending precious hours on it I’m sad to say I can’t find that. I was happy that I got the fonts to change in the compiler eventually (the place to do that was right in front of my face!). This one… not so easy to crack.
Oh I tried to create a preset as well saving the fonts I wanted as I went. They loaded in but again when I went to the documents in the project they had changed back to the above defaults.
Please help!
KK 
I’m not quite clear from your post exactly which steps you’re taking, so I’ll describe the basic process for setting default fonts.
In Preferences > Formatting you will see a dummy text box. Click on the ‘A’ button and choose the font and size you want. Similarly, use the other controls to set the layout of a default paragraph. All documents you create from now on will use this default format for a basic paragraph, but it won’t affect documents you’ve already created.
To convert existing documents, select them all in the binder and Documents > Convert to Default Formatting…. This will allow you to select whether to convert just the font, or the line spacing / tabs etc.
(BTW, the Preferences > Formatting defaults apply to every document and project from this point on, but it’s possible to override them for individual projects in Project > Text Preferences. If the ‘Override text settings for this project’ box is ticked, then the ‘Preferences > Formatting’ settings will have no effect for this project.)
You have now converted all your documents to the default format: this means (depending on the options you chose in the last step) that you might have changed any specific formatting you did such as block quotes, unless you used the “preserve formatting” setting for those paragraphs.
All the above applies to the documents as you see them in the Editor. When you come to Compile, you can choose whether to replicate the format from the documents or to override them: e.g. you can have your editor text in Comic Sans 90 and still produce the final compiled document in Helvetica 12.
The best way to get fine control over this is to choose the All Options tab of the Compilation dialogue. Under ‘formatting’, there is a check box to toggle ‘Override formatting’ (not at my Mac at the moment, so I can’t remember the exact wording.) If it is checked, you can format every level of the project individually. It’s possible that this setting is checked and it’s overriding your editor defaults on compilation.
Some other points:
I don’t really understand what you mean when you say ‘I select helvetica bold 20 as the setting for the title’. Do you mean in the Scrivenings section of Preferences > Formatting? If so, that only sets the title for when you select multiple documents in the binder to make one long virtual document (‘Scrivenings mode’). Those titles have no real existence in your final compiled document, they’re just a convenience in the editor.
In general, if you use the compilation settings above, you can compile chapter headings etc automatically from the binder titles without having to type them in the text itself.
I realise this is a general answer to your questions, but perhaps it will help to isolate where the problem is occurring?
Thanks so much.
I found an answer to my problem then read your response but I’m not understanding why the system formatting wasn’t keeping.
I changed the formats in preferences to how I would like them.
I clicked OK.
I then converted the document to the default format. I was worried that I needed to select all docs in the project so I did that anyway. As soon as I did that I got a warning that the default font for the text was in bold = and did I want to change to this or not go bold? Of course I didn’t want to go bold as I had made sure the body text was helvetica 10 not bold. When I went back to check the system fonts in preferences the body font was showing as helevetica 12 bold - even though when I last looked it was as I wanted it helvetica 10 not bold. I felt as if I was going mad.
Anyway after a few hundred times of checking all this I found that I could redefine presets in the formatting menu. When I went to do this it worked. I now have the formats behaving as I want but do not know if this is just for this specific project or globally. I’m too scared to try another project right now and I’m a bit under pressure.
Ironically this is a book about technology 
so I better get Scrivener purring along nicely!
thanks,
KK
It sounds a bit odd: I’ve never personally experienced preferences losing its settings in this way.
I’ve just tried to replicate it: making the default bold brings up the ‘Are you really really sure’ dialogue as you describe. Selecting ‘Not bold’ makes the conversion without emboldening. It leaves the Preferences setting as bold though (as you’d expect) – but the font size change works and isn’t changed in the settings. Are you sure that ‘Project > Text Preferences > Override text formatting for this project’ is unchecked?
As for preset formatting, that sounds like a bit of a red herring. It shouldn’t affect the default format at all. All preset formats do is to apply a certain combination of formatting to text – they amend the default. Preset formats do persist across projects, though, so you shouldn’t have to redefine them.
I’m only a user, so I could be wrong, but it sounds like you may have an issue with this project. Why don’t you set up a quick project to test. Change the default format, create a new document and see if you still get the same problem. It will only take five minutes and will give you some piece of mind if it works… If not, you have something specific to report to the help desk.
Good luck with the project…
Thanks for your helpful responses. I’m still having problems with keeping the default formats. They just don’t want to save for some reason when I change them.
I tried a new project and the same thing happened.
I’ll try to figure it out once the pressure is off 
I think I’d try two things: deleting Scrivener and installing a freshly downloaded copy of the application; and opening Disk Utility and repairing permissions on your hard drive. The latter will take several minutes (depending on how fast your computer is, and how big the hard drive is). You’d be surprised how many permissions errors there can be on a drive that seems to be working normally.
Martin.
It sounds like you’re trying to change the formatting for the different presets by making adjustments in the Formatting pane of Preferences. The way to do this is via the Format menu, as you found–set some text in the editor formatted the way you want your preset, then choose Format > Formatting > New Preset from Selection or Redefine Preset from Selection.
The Preferences pane is just for setting the default formatting for new documents. You can select a preset from the format bar there to apply that preset to the sample text, just as you would select it from the format bar in the editor to apply it to text in a document. But this is only going to change what the default document text format is; it doesn’t redefine the preset.
So it doesn’t sound like there’s anything wrong with your project or with your copy of Scrivener or anything like that, just a misunderstanding about how to create formatting presets. Along with this though I’d also add that these are not dynamic styles the way you might be used to in some word processors, so redefining the “title” preset will not change all the text to which you had earlier applied that preset. Presets are just saved formatting for convenient application.