How to quickly change to ‘Text Width’ view in Word.
A useful view for Word documents is Text Width view but it’s not on the toolbar or ribbon so how can you switch to it quickly?
Text Width view is good because it puts text across the available screen width without margins. That’s especially handy on smaller screens (eg laptops and netbooks).
Here’s the standard Page Width view with the grey areas on each side.
And here’s the same text in Text Width view:
The text is a little larger on the screen because there’s a bit more screen space available.
Page Width is on the Word 2007/Word 2010 ribbon but Text Width isn’t. Text Width is on the Zoom dialog where it has been for many versions of Word:
Sadly Microsoft doesn’t think much of ‘Text Width’ view because it’s not on the Word 2007/2010 command list for adding to the Quick Access Toolbar (at least we can’t find it).
Here are the options available for fast access to Text Width view:
Use Draft mode instead. Draft is on the View ribbon and can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar. It’s also on the Status bar (just to the left of the Zoom slide control). Draft mode is sufficiently similar to Text Width in print layout for most purposes.
Add the Zoom dialog to the Quick Access Toolbar. Click on that button to open the Zoom dialog.
Use the Zoom slider in Word 2010. This isn’t as precise as the explicit menu option but gets the same result.
Why not add to Quick Access Toolbar?
Regular Office-Watch readers might be wondering why we don’t create a macro to enable or toggle the ‘Text Width’ view. That’s the usual way around a missing command.
In this case that’s not possible because inside Word the ‘Text Width’ view doesn’t really exist! When you choose ‘Text Width’ in the Zoom dialog, Word works out the percentage zoom that applies given the document and the current Word window size.
If you go into the VBA language you can see this. Recording a short macro to enable Text Width mode returns this:
ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Zoom.Percentage = 151
The % value changes depending on the Word window size. That means a button you add to the QAT would only work for some documents and assumes the Word application window is the same size.
Using the autocomplete function in VBA shows the available options:
As you can see, PageFit is there but not TextFit or similar.
There may be a way to do it by getting the current application window width plus other details then calculating the Zoom level that applies in that case.
But it would be easier if Microsoft ensured that dialog box options have direct and obvious equivalents in VBA (if not the command list).
