How can I make Word 2013 open in Draft View by default?

Anonymous
2013-04-16T04:27:08+00:00

I use Word 2013 on a 14" laptop and the default view, Print Layout, is a colossal waste of space, but I can't get the program to open in Draft View by default. Have done the following:

  • Changed settings to "allow documents to open in Draft View"
  • Saved documents in Draft View...they re-open in Print Layout
  • Tried to change New Document template to Draft View but new documents still only open in Print Layout.

I hope that the answer is not "you have to change to draft view every single time you open a document." There are already a lot more clicks / action in Word 2013 than in previous versions.

Have searched forums but there doesn't seem to be an answer for this in Word 2013.

Thanks for your assistance.

BP211

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Answer accepted by question author
Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2013-04-16T19:49:33+00:00

Follow the instructions at http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm to put the following two macros into a module in the Normal.dotm template:

Sub AutoOpen()

    ActiveWindow.View.Draft = True

End Sub

Sub AutoNew()

    ActiveWindow.View.Draft = True

End Sub

The first will run automatically every time you open an existing document, and the second will run when you create a new document.

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2013-04-19T03:51:09+00:00

That one's hidden about as deeply as possible. A lot of the things in the Options dialog are properties of the Options object in VBA, so you can say things like Options.Overtype = False. Controlling the draft font display is not one of those things. :-(

Actually, it's a throwback to Word 2003 and earlier. The Dialogs collection includes a member called Dialogs(wdDialogToolsOptionsView), which refers to a tab of the Options dialog that no longer exists (and of course the Options command isn't on the Tools menu, which doesn't exist). That dialog has an argument named DraftFont, which is a boolean (true/false) value. So this is how you do it:

Sub AutoOpen()

Dim dlg As Dialog

Set dlg = Dialogs(wdDialogToolsOptionsView)

With dlg

    .DraftFont = False

    .Execute

End With

ActiveWindow.View.Draft = True

End Sub

and similarly for AutoNew().

By the way, both your original problem and this one point the the probability that there's something amiss in your Windows registry, because these things should be saved there automatically. This trouble sometimes happens when you have certain third-party add-ins or other programs that interfere with Word's ability to write to the registry. There can also be misconfiguration of the permissions for certain parts of the registry. If you think that working with macros is harrowing, you don't want to know how to troubleshoot the registry. If these two macros solve the problem, leave well enough alone.

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  1. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-05-30T00:57:07+00:00

    Regarding the message to save the AutoCorrect template on exit, I hate to fall back on the classic programmer's bug response, "It doesn't happen here" -- but that's the case. I do have both templates in the Startup folder, and I don't see any message about changes in the template when I close a document or close down Word 2013.

    I've scanned through the code in both templates, and there shouldn't be a message like that. Greg's code does make changes to the template's image in memory, but he's been careful to set a flag that tells Word not to try to save the changes. My own code doesn't make any changes -- and even if it did, they would be changes to the SaveView template, not the AutoCorrect one.

    Do you have any other templates in the Startup folder? Maybe one of them hasn't been so careful.

    Regarding installation, you shouldn't have had to do anything other than save the template files into the Startup folder. No macro programming should be needed unless you want to improve the templates' code.

    I heartily agree with your opinion that none of this would be necessary if Microsoft had left well enough alone. I'm not quite as enamored of Word 2003 as Suzanne is, and Word 2007 was a mess, but I think Word 2010 has a much nicer user interface than does Word 2013. Someone at Microsoft got a bee in his bonnet about "clutter" that was "distracting users from the document" and ordered all sorts of destructive changes. Some of them we can program around, while others are not remediable.

    Regarding the option "Allow opening a document in Draft view", it does seem quite useless. If you don't use the SaveView add-in or something similar, all documents will open in Print Layout view regardless of the setting of the option. When you do use SaveView, the document opens in Print Layout view and then the view is switched to whatever was saved in the file, so again it doesn't matter what the option is set to. I suspect the option is simply left over from Word 2010 and earlier.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-11T17:15:27+00:00

    This guy IS SO RIGHT ON!!

    Way too many clicks on 2013.  I have been using it for almost a year and I still find it onerous for the most basic tasks.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-11T17:18:10+00:00

    Thank you Suzanne for your comments on Word 2013.  When I speak with MS they act like I am the only person who is frustrated by this version.

    It is horrible, time consuming and so NOT user friendly.

    Thank you (I'll call you next time :=)

    Maura

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