Word 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Setting Up the Document: Margins, Page Breaks, and More

Your document makes a first impression before anyone reads a word. The paper size, color, and borders give the reader an overall sense of the document’s theme and quality. Margins, the text layout, and perhaps a watermark send further visual clues. Making the right choices about your document setup helps you send the right message to your readers. Say you’re working on an invitation; using a smaller, elegant paper size and adding a subtle border lets your recipients know right away that they’re in for a sophisticated event.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to set and change all the page layout features that people notice first, starting with paper size, orientation, and margins. You’ll also learn how to adjust margins and make changes to the headers and footers. Finally, you’ll learn how to work with multiple columns and how to control Word’s hyphenation inclinations.

Choosing Paper Size and Layout

When you edit a document in Word, what you see on your computer screen looks almost exactly like the final printed page. To get that correct preview, Word needs to know some details about the paper you’re using, like the page size and orientation. You have two different ways to change the page settings: using the Page Layout tab (Figure 3-1) or the Page Setup dialog box (Figure 3-2). When you click the Page Layout tab, the ribbon’s buttons and icons change to show you options related to designing your page as a whole. Your ...