It is the successor of MS Sans Serif, formerly Helv, a proportional bitmap font introduced in Windows 1.0.

The typeface was designed to match the MS Sans bitmap included in the early releases of Microsoft Windows.

[1][2] Microsoft Sans Serif's predecessor is Helv (a shortened form of Helvetica), a bitmap font included with Windows 1.0 and later.

OpenType features includes init, isol, medi, fina, liga for default Arabic script.

Version 1.41 (supplied with Windows XP SP2) includes 2257 glyphs (2301 characters, 28 blocks), which extended Unicode ranges to include Combining Diacritical Marks, Currency Symbols, Cyrillic Supplement, Geometric Shapes, Greek Extended, IPA Extensions, Number Forms, Spacing Modifier Letters.

On October 16, 2007, Apple announced on their website that the next version of Mac OS X v10.5 ("Leopard"), would include Microsoft Sans Serif.

Leopard also ships with several other previously Microsoft-only fonts, including Tahoma, Arial Unicode, and Wingdings.