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

Your reply is nonsense. The question is "How can I make Word 2013 open in Draft View by default?" I do have office 2013 by myself and had the same problem. Solved as I have described.

As stated previously in this thread, Word 2013 and 2016 no longer store the view and zoom with documents. This can be easily demonstrated. However, that does not mean that view and zoom can be reliably set "globally" for all documents, which is also very easy to demonstrate. The zoom can be set a bit more reliably, but it may revert back to 100% for example if a document opens in Protected view. Also, Word 2016 (in particular) seems to spontaneously open in Web Layout view (which is similar to, but not identical to, Draft view). In summary, macro "intervention" appears to be required if you want to control the view and zoom of Word documents.

I have also created an add-in to deal with this problem. It extends the functionality in Jay's macro and allows itself to be configured. You can choose to reopen the previous view, or simply always open in the view of your choice. The configuration is via a dialog box; so, you can easily turn it on and off. Download from here: http://rath.ca/Misc/VBA/Word/ViewMgr%20v1.1.zip I have other Word resources as well that you can access at http://rath.ca/Misc/VBA/VBA_Word.html Was glad to see you’re still following this thread. THANK YOU so much for your macro! *1^st^ of all for those coming in late like I did, unless you’re comfortable with macros, hopefully to save you from slogging through the entire thread several times, as well as others covering the same issue, the easiest thing that works is: Jay Freedman's add-in mentioned in Stefan Blom's response on 6/28/16. The only caveat with it that I ran into is that it only applies to files you have opened and saved from the time you installed his SaveView2013. I have innumerable older files that I open every day so I was still running into the same problem. Christopher Rath’s answer extends the functionality to any files I open whether I have saved them in draft view or not (except protected files or that type thing). The minor thing I’ve run into today is that CR’s macro doesn’t apply to New documents. Is there a macro I can add to normal (or global) template that will change that to draft view also? P.S. Just so you know, I understand and can work with macros in a limited fashion, but since I rarely do so, I have to refresh my memory every time, so a step by step answer would be great ( : Thanks in advance!

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

Anonymous

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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author

Jay Freedman 208.3K Volunteer Moderator

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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Answer accepted by question author

Jay Freedman 208.3K Volunteer Moderator

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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59 additional answers

Anonymous

2017-05-22T11:34:31+00:00

Your reply is nonsense. The question is "How can I make Word 2013 open in Draft View by default?"

I do have office 2013 by myself and had the same problem. Solved as I have described.
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Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2017-05-26T10:20:06+00:00

As stated previously in this thread, Word 2013 and 2016 no longer store the view and zoom with documents. This can be easily demonstrated.

However, that does not mean that view and zoom can be reliably set "globally" for all documents, which is also very easy to demonstrate. The zoom can be set a bit more reliably, but it may revert back to 100% for example if a document opens in Protected view.

Also, Word 2016 (in particular) seems to spontaneously open in Web Layout view (which is similar to, but not identical to, Draft view).

In summary, macro "intervention" appears to be required if you want to control the view and zoom of Word documents.
Was this answer helpful?

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Anonymous

2017-05-26T17:31:36+00:00

I have also created an add-in to deal with this problem. It extends the functionality in Jay's macro and allows itself to be configured. You can choose to reopen the previous view, or simply always open in the view of your choice. The configuration is via a dialog box; so, you can easily turn it on and off. Download from here: http://rath.ca/Misc/VBA/Word/ViewMgr%20v1.1.zip

I have other Word resources as well that you can access at http://rath.ca/Misc/VBA/VBA_Word.html

Was glad to see you’re still following this thread. THANK YOU so much for your macro!

*1^st^ of all for those coming in late like I did, unless you’re comfortable with macros, hopefully to save you from slogging through the entire thread several times, as well as others covering the same issue, the easiest thing that works is: Jay Freedman's add-in mentioned in Stefan Blom's response on 6/28/16. The only caveat with it that I ran into is that it only applies to files you have opened and saved from the time you installed his SaveView2013. I have innumerable older files that I open every day so I was still running into the same problem. Christopher Rath’s answer extends the functionality to any files I open whether I have saved them in draft view or not (except protected files or that type thing).

The minor thing I’ve run into today is that CR’s macro doesn’t apply to New documents. Is there a macro I can add to normal (or global) template that will change that to draft view also?

P.S. Just so you know, I understand and can work with macros in a limited fashion, but since I rarely do so, I have to refresh my memory every time, so a step by step answer would be great ( : Thanks in advance!
Was this answer helpful?

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