In my previous blog post, I told you why and how I use Draft view for the documents I am not editing. In this blog I tell you how I set up my screen for the document I am editing.

Hiding headers and footers

I start by editing the document in Print Layout View because I need to check the appearance of the text on the page as well as its content. However, after I have set up the headers and footers, I hide the top and bottom margins (or, to use Microsoft’s terminology, I hide the ‘white space’ between pages. Note that ‘white’ here means ‘blank’). This lets me see more of the text at once, without being distracted by the headers and footers. I can also scroll faster through the text because it uses less memory (RAM).

You can hide and unhide the white space either at the top of the document or between pages. In this blog, I tell you how to hide the white space at the top of the document and how to unhide it between the pages, but you can mix and match. The mouse pointers and tooltips are the same in both places.

To hide the top and bottom margins

Press Ctrl + Home to go to the beginning of the document, and put your cursor (hover) in the ‘crack’ just below the ribbon. Double-click when the mouse pointer changes to arrows facing each other (if you hover a little longer, a tooltip saying ‘Double-click to hide white space’ should appear), as shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1. Double-click to hide white space (in this case, at the top of the page). You can see I keep my ribbon collapsed, with my Quick Access Toolbar below it, and the ruler showing. Your setup might be different but the white space is the same. Tip: Collapse the ribbon by pressing Ctrl + F1 or double-clicking any of the tab headers, eg ‘Home’ or ‘Layout’.

To unhide the margins

Put your cursor on the line between any two pages and double-click when the mouse pointer changes to arrows facing away from each other (a tooltip saying ‘Double-click to show white space’ should appear), as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Double-click to show white space (in this case, between pages). Note: You cannot do this if you are in a header or footer, and older versions of Microsoft only let you do it if you put your cursor in a left or right margin.

Zooming to two pages in Word

After I have finished editing, I click on the View tab, then the Zoom button in the Zoom group, then select the Many Pages drop-down icon of a computer screen (the Many Pages drop-down in the Zoom dialogue box is different to Multiple Pages in the Zoom group). I hover my cursor over the page icons that appear (they will become highlighted to show you what you are about to select) and then click when the top two pages are highlighted and the description below reads ‘1 x 2 Pages’ (Figure 3). This displays the document in two-page view (Figure 4) with the margins showing. I can then scroll through the document (pressing Page Down on the keyboard scrolls the document a whole page length at a time) to make sure I did not miss anything while I worked with headers, footers and other white space hidden.

Figure 3. Zoom to ‘1 x 2 Pages’ Note: You can do this only in Print Layout view.

Figure 4. Two pages in Print Layout view. Note: Page 3 is on the left and page 4 is on the right, ie Word does not show the correct layout of facing (even and odd) pages in two-page view. See the FAQ Two-page view – Which programs can I use? about how to see the pages as they would be printed.

Let me close with two summaries:

Why I find hiding headers and footers useful:

• You can scroll faster when there is less white space.
• You use your screen space more efficiently.
• You are not distracted from the text by whatever is in the headers and footers.
• You can see better how paragraphs and tables hang together across the pages.

Why I find scrolling in two-page view useful:

• Unlike in Print Preview (Ctrl+p), you can make changes to the text, and you press PageDown only once to see the next two pages.
• At a glance, you can check:
  The uniformity of margins, footers and headers.
  ●  That page numbers run properly from section to section.
  ●  The case of headings.
  ●  The placement and uniformity of figures and tables.
  ●  The placement and case of captions, sources and legends.

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