Displaying a Single Page

Walter's screen shows two pages of his document, side by side. He only wants one page the full width of the screen, but he's not sure how to change that.

As you adjust the zoom settings used by Word, you may notice that Word automatically displays multiple pages of your document at the same time. This is especially true if you are using a widescreen monitor at a high resolution. In that case, as you get your zoom factor down to near 50%, Word automatically switches to display two pages.

There are a few ways that you can get back to a single page. The first thing you'll want to do, however, is to make sure you are not using one of Word's non-standard views. For instance, if you are in Reading Layout view, it can affect what is on your screen. Try pressing the Esc key, using the view icons on the Status bar, or using the choices from the View menu to return to a regular view, such as Normal or Page Layout.

One easy way to display just a single page is to simply "zoom out" a bit by holding down the Ctrl key as you move the scroll wheel on your mouse. As you zoom in and Word discovers that it can no longer display two pages on the screen, it should switch automatically to show only a single page.

Another approach is to choose Zoom from the View menu in order to display the Zoom dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Zoom dialog box.

Select the Page Width radio button and click OK. Word calculates the proper zoom percentage to show a single page at the width available on your screen. If you prefer, you can click one of the other single-page options—Whole Page or Text Width. (Pick the one that gives you the appearance you desire.)

If, for some reason, your zoom setting still doesn't look right, you may be interested in the information provided at this page on the Word MVP site:

http://wordmvp.com/FAQs/General/SaveViewAndZoom.htm

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (966) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Displaying a Single Page.