Controlling Display of the Status Bar

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 8, 2020)

The status bar is the area at the bottom of the Word window that indicates information about the current document. It displays information about what page you are on, as well as your line number on the page and character number on the line. It also shows information about which editing toggles you have turned on. If you need more room to view a document, or you don't need the information provided by the status bar, you can turn it off. To control display of the status bar, follow these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the View tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The View tab of the Options dialog box.

Click on the Status Bar check box. If there is a check mark in the check box, then the status bar will be displayed; no check mark means it will not.
Click on OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1202) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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