Chapter 13
In This Chapter
Choosing the page size
Switching the page orientation
Setting margins
Automatically numbering your pages
Changing page numbers
Creating a new page
Coloring the page background
Including a watermark
Word is only mildly interested in the concept of a page. Unlike the real world, where a page is a physical sheet of paper, Word conjures new pages when needed, pulling them in from the electronic ether. That makes the concept of a page ethereal. To root things in reality, Word lets you define the page format, which includes the page size, orientation, margins, as well as other page formats and attributes.
Word begins its page-formatting adventure by defining exactly what a page looks like. That includes the page’s physical dimensions and which portion of the page contains text.
You probably assume that each new document starts with a page size reflecting a typical sheet of paper.
Such foolishness.
Word’s Normal template does specify a page size equivalent to a standard sheet of paper. In the US, that’s 8½-by-11 inches. In Europe, the A4 size is used. You’re not stuck with either size, because the page size is part of the page format, and you can change it. Follow these steps:
Click the Layout tab on the Ribbon.
In the Page Setup group, click the Size button.
The Size button icon is shown in the margin.
Choose a page size from the list.
For example, if you want to print on that tall, legal-size paper, choose Legal from the list.
Your entire document is updated to reflect the new page size, from first page to last.
An aspect of page size is whether the page is oriented vertically or horizontally. (I’m assuming it’s no longer the fashion to print on square paper.) Page orientation could be set by adjusting the page size, but it’s much easier to change the page orientation. Follow these steps:
Click the Layout tab.
Click the Orientation button.
The Orientation button is illustrated in the margin. It has two items on its menu: Portrait and Landscape.
Word shifts the orientation for every page in your document. This doesn't mean that the text is sideways, but rather that the text prints wide on a page (though I suppose you could look at it as printing sideways).
Margins create the text area on a page, left, right, top, and bottom. They provide room between the text and the page’s edge, which keeps the text from leaking out of a document and all over the computer.
Word automatically sets page margins at 1 inch from every page edge. Most English teachers and book editors want margins of this size because these people love to scribble in margins. (They even write that way on blank paper.)
To adjust page margins in Word, obey these steps:
Click the Layout tab.
Click the Margins button.
It’s found in the Page Setup group and shown in the margin.
Clicking the Margins button displays a menu full of common margin options.
The new margins affect all pages in your document — unless you split your document into sections, in which case the changes apply to only the current section. See Chapter 14 for information on sections.
The choices available on the Margins menu list settings for the top, left, bottom, and right margins. Yes, all four margins are set at one time. When you want to set specific margins, choose the Custom Margins item from the bottom of the menu, and then use the Margins tab in the Page Setup dialog box to set each margin. Refer to the next section for more information.
When you want more control over page formatting, you must beckon forth the Page Setup dialog box, as shown in Figure 13-1. Specifically, you use the Margins tab in that dialog box, which is shown in the figure.
To use the Page Setup dialog box to specifically set page margins, obey these steps:
Click the dialog box launcher in the lower-right corner of the Page Setup group.
The Page Setup dialog box appears, Margins tab forward.
Type the margin offsets in the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right boxes.
Or you can use the spinner gizmo to set the values.
Use the Preview to check the margins as they relate to page size.
Ensure that Whole Document is chosen from the Apply To menu button.
You can reset margins for only a section or selected text if you instead choose those options from the menu. See Chapter 14 for information on sections.
The Gutter settings help set margins when you need extra space on one edge of the page for binding. For example, if you plan on using a 3-hole punch on the left side of a page, choose Left from the Gutter Position menu. Then increase the Gutter margin to accommodate for the three holes in the page without affecting the left margin setting.
I remain puzzled by people who manually number their pages in Word. Such a thing is silly beyond belief. That’s because
Your word processor numbers your pages for you!
Memorize it. Live it. Be it.
Word can not only automatically number your pages, but it also lets you place the page number just about anywhere on the page and in a variety of fun and useful formats. Heed these directions:
In the Header & Footer area, click the Page Number command button.
A menu drops down, showing various page-numbering options. The first three are locations: Top of Page, Bottom of Page, and Page Margins (the sides of the page).
Choose where to place the page numbers.
I want my page numbers on the bottom of the page, so I regularly choose the Bottom of Page option.
Pluck a page-numbering style from the list.
You see oodles of samples, so don't cut yourself short by not scrolling through the menu. You can even choose those famous page X of Y formats.
Dutifully, Word numbers each page in your document, starting with 1 on the first page, up to however many pages long the thing grows.
Here’s the good part: If you delete a page, Word renumbers everything for you. Insert a page? Word renumbers everything for you again, automatically. As long as you insert the page number as described in this section, Word handles everything.
You and I know that the first page of a document is page 1, but Word doesn't care. It lets you start numbering your document at whichever page number you want. If you want to start numbering your document at page 42, you can do so, if you follow these instructions:
In the Header & Footer area, choose Page Number ⇒ Format Page Numbers.
The Page Number Format dialog box materializes, as shown in Figure 13-2.
Word starts numbering your document at the specified page number. So if you enter 42 in Step 4, the first page of the document is now page 42, the next page is 43, and so on.
Of course, this trick works best when page numbers are already set for your document, as described in the preceding section.
When the urge hits you to regress a few centuries and use Roman numerals to tally a document's pages, Word is happy to oblige. Sic facite:
Set the location for page numbers in your document.
Refer to the section “Adding an automatic page number.” Once page numbers are established, you can set a different format.
Click the Page Number command button and choose Format Page Numbers.
The Page Number Format dialog box appears.
Choose a style from the Number Format menu.
Two Roman numeral styles are available, lowercase and uppercase.
Hail Caesar!
To banish automatic page numbers from above, below, or anywhere around your text, follow these steps:
Choose Remove Page Numbers.
And they’re gone.
These steps remove only the page numbers set by using the Page Number command button, as described earlier in this chapter. Page numbers you’ve inserted in the text are unaffected, as are any page numbers you’ve manually added to a document’s header or footer.
To remove a manually inserted page number, use the Backspace key. Such page numbers are actually document fields. See Chapter 23 for information on fields.
With Word, you’ll never have the excuse “I need more pages” when writing text. That’s because Word adds new, blank pages as needed. These pages are appended to the end of the document, so even if you're typing in the midst of a chapter, the extra pages keep appearing so that no text is lost and nothing falls off the edge. That's refreshing, but it’s not the end of Word’s capability to add new pages into your document.
You have two choices when it comes to starting text at the top of a page in the middle of a document.
The first choice is to keep whacking the Enter key until that new page shows up. This approach is horribly wrong. It works, but it leads to trouble later as you edit your document.
The second, and preferred, choice is to insert a hard page break:
Position the insertion pointer where you want one page to end and the next page to start.
I recommend splitting the page at the start of a new paragraph.
In the Pages group, click the Page Break command button.
Text before the insertion pointer is on the previous page, and text after the insertion pointer is on the next page.
The hard page break stays with your text. No matter how you edit or add text, the split between pages remains.
Suddenly, you need a blank page in the middle of a document. Follow these steps:
In the Pages group, click the Blank Page command button.
A new blank page appears at the insertion pointer’s position.
Any text before the insertion pointer appears before the blank page. Any text after the insertion pointer appears after the new page.
A page is also a canvas, a background upon which your document rests. That background sports a few formatting options of its own, items that dwell outside a document but remain part of the page formatting.
The simple way to print colored pages is to choose color paper. When the price of printer ink isn’t an option, you can direct Word to format each page in a document with a different background color. Follow these steps:
In the Page Background group, click the Page color button.
You see a menu full of colors.
Choose a color from the palette.
Or choose the More Colors menu item to pluck out your own favorite page background color.
The color chosen in Step 3 is applied to the document’s pages.
To remove the color, choose the item No Color in Step 3.
Viewing a colored page on the screen is one thing. Seeing it printed is another. In Word, you must direct the printer to print page background color by following these steps:
Click the File tab and choose Options.
The Word Options dialog box appears.
Click OK.
The page background color now appears when the document is printed — well, assuming that you have a color printer.
When fine paper is held up to the light, it shows a watermark — an image embedded into the paper. The image is impressive but faint. Word lets you fake a watermark by inserting faint text or graphics behind every page in your document. Here's how:
In the Page Background group, click the Watermark button.
A menu plops down with a host of predefined watermarks that you can safely duck behind the text on your document's pages.
Choose a watermark from the menu.
The watermark is applied to every page in your document.
To rid your document's pages of the watermark, choose the Remove Watermark command in Step 3.
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