Microsoft Word used to work great for me, but now when I open letters and other documents, the text is HUGE and I have to scroll to the right to even see the whole page. What’s wrong and how can I fix it?
This is a one word answer: zoom.
Well, let me be a bit more informative, shall I? There are a couple of things that affect how you view a document when you open up Microsoft Word (or most other word processors, for that matter): the size of the type in the document itself, the “view” you’ve selected and the “zoom” you have set to make things larger or smaller.
Since you said you have to scroll to the right to see the whole page, we can eliminate type size as a problem: Even if you had the entire letter set to 128pt Palatino, the page itself wouldn’t change size and you’d be able to see both margins. You’d just have really big text within those margins.
Could it be the view you’ve selected? No, because the alternative views you have in Microsoft Word tend to make things smaller, not bigger, as I’ll demonstrate in a moment.
Which leads us to the zoom setting. And to see that in action, let’s start with a view of a story I’ve been reading in MS Word: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
The key that there’s a zoom issue is that the left edge of the page can be seen against the grey background, but the right side is outta sight. And not in a good way!
The answer to solving that lies in the slider on the lower right edge. Let’s look closer:
There’s the problem. The zoom is set to 259% which is a lot of zooming in, and that’s why the page is wider than the window can display. Nice if you have some vision issues or just like bigger text, but when it’s wider than the window, it does get really annoying.
Fortunately the fix is as simple as clicking and dragging the slider control or just clicking on the “-” to the left of the slider to make the page smaller.
A few clicks and I’m back in business:
Way better! Notice that I’m at 129% zoom, not quite back to 100%. I usually adjust the zoom factor to make the page just barely fit on the width of my window because I do like larger text to work with.
And while we’re talking about view modes and the lower right corner of the Word window, notice that there are some other icons to the left of the zoom slider. They’re for different views and the one I really like is “draft” view. A click and you can see it simplifies the document by removing the page visual elements and getting rid of top and bottom margins so that it flows better:
This is what I call a “screen friendly” view and unless you’re worried about how your document is going to come out when printed, it’s often the very best mode for quick edits and composition.
Hope that helps out, and I’ll bet that the zoom was the culprit all along!
I’m having a similar issue. It’s not the zoom level (currently at 90%), it’s the side windows within word. If I search for something in the document, the side window opens up quite large, and the font is MASSIVE. There’s nowhere that I see to change the text of the UI stuff.
I wonder if that’s a function of your system font size? Try going into the system settings and change the font size (might be in accessibility too) to something else, then back to your preferred setting. Reboot. Then see if that fixes Word?
I did what you suggested, and I had previously discovered zoom in the view menu. The problem is, when I close the document and reopen it, the text appears at 242% again. It’s a pain to suddenly have to readjust the size every time I open a doc. This is a new occurrence.
That’s very strange. Try resizing it to the zoom you want, then saving the document with a new name using “Save As…”. Open the new version. Same thing happening?
Thank you so much! You are fantastic! It resolved my problem and I ddin’t even have to get my kids to help me out this time.
Thanks so much! I was so frustrated. Have a great day!
Thanks for the info it worked a treat. Great.