If software didn’t have default settings, every time you opened a program it would start asking a dozen questions about page size, margins, fonts, tabs, and other document settings before you could ever get started on your file. No such thing as a quick start. Default settings are timesavers. Unfortunately, if the default settings don’t fit the way you work, you may find yourself repeatedly customizing each document individually before you can get started. It’s time to reset your defaults.
For Adobe InDesign, PageMaker, and QuarkXPress, and other page layout applications, adjust the settings while no documents are open and those settings become the default for all subsequent documents. Changes made while a document is open affect only that document. In addition to application and document settings, changing the properties of a tool when no corresponding object is selected (such as text tool properties with no text block selected) can change the defaults for that tool. The actual settings or preferences that can be changed in this way may vary from program to program but these are just a few typical settings you may want to adjust globally:
Page Size and Margins
The default is typically a letter-size page in portrait mode. If you usually work with a different page size change the default.
Guides
Placement in front or back of objects and the color of guides is sometimes customizable.
Measurements
If you always use millimeters, picas, or some other units, change the default vertical and horizontal units of measurements for rulers and guides.
Graphics Display
Adjust the display of graphics for high-quality display (slower) or low-quality display (faster). This doesn’t affect how the image prints, only how it looks on-screen.
Text Display
To speed up screen redraws, specify a larger type size at which the program will "greek" the text display at certain magnifications. Zoom out to get an overall view of the document that draws quickly because it doesn’t have to render as much text.
Typographical Settings
Specify the automatic use of proper typographer’s quote marks.
Fonts
Even though you will change the fonts for each document, you can still change the default preferences for paragraph and display text if you wish.
Rules and Best Practices in Page Layout Illustrations: Document Defaults shows some of the ways that changing defaults can improve a layout.
The Bottomline: Default settings are not inherently right or wrong. They are great for getting you started faster but don’t forget to fine-tune those settings to meet the needs of the particular type of document you are creating.
