Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Automatically Opening a Document at a Specific Zoom Setting.
Unfortunately, Word does not have a setting you can use to specify a default "open" zoom level for your documents. (This would be very nice—Redmond, are you listening?) This means that documents open at the zoom level used when the document was originally saved.
One way to work around this is to create an AutoOpen macro, and then save it in the Normal template. This macro is then automatically run whenever a document based on the template is opened. Since every document has access to the Normal template, every document will have access to the macro.
To make the change, simply open the Normal template file directly and then create your macro, as follows:
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: 
Public Sub AutoOpen()
ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Zoom.Percentage = 200
End Sub
Notice that in this very short macro the zoom level is set to 200, which means 200%. If you want some other default zoom level, simply change the value to the desired percentage. Now save and close your Normal template, and exit Word. When you restart Word and open your other files, they should change to the specified zoom level automatically.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1343) 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: Automatically Opening a Document at a Specific Zoom Setting.
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