Outlook 2003 message shows only dots

[Hamhound]

My 88 year old uncle tells me his Outlook now only displays a dot when he types a new message. Anything entered from the keyboard is displayed as a dot. He has resorted to typing into Word and copying this into the Outlook message body.
I do not know if this happens only in the message body or also in the To, Subject boxes.
Any ideas of what he did? He is 100 miles away so tough to troubleshoot remotly and he is pretty much a novice. His machine is XP and I have Win 7.
Thanks!

[EzyStvy]

Tools->Options->Mail Format tab->Fonts button-> When composing a new mail message

Change the font to something like Arial.

[Hamhound]

Thanks for the suggestion. I had thought of this but since learn from a screen shot I tought him to send me that it is something else. It appears that the the body of the message has been shrunk to maybe 20% of 'full size'. A ruler appears at the top of the message pane that is about 1/3 of the width and is labeled 2 onthe left to 20 on the right. The 'dots' are actually characters that are so small that it looks like dots and fit only into this 1/3 width 'pane'.
I have tried to find a view setting of some kind but have yet to find how to expand/contract the size of what is presented in the message pane.
Still looking for ideas. On top of being 88 years old, my uncle has pretty poor eyesight so 1 point font does not work well!
Thanks.

[EzyStvy]

What is the SIZE of the font that is being used?

In the same location I mentioned above are two options to use MS Word as an editor-> UNcheck both of them.