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

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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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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Answer accepted by question author
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. Anonymous
    2015-05-29T17:07:28+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:

    I know this post is from a while ago, but I'm hoping you might be able to help me out. The link you provide here only seems to support Word versions up to 2010 - nothing for 2013.

    My basic issue is that, in Word 2013, the "Allow opening a document in Draft view" option doesn't seem to work AT ALL.

    All I can get out of Microsoft "support" on the matter (either online or phone support) is a suggestion to check back to this webpage, and/or a few other places. Otherwise they have nothing useful to say whatsoever.

    Anyone out there got any idea how to set up these macros for Word 2013?

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  2. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-12-11T10:30:55+00:00

    Thanks for the follow-up.

    For what it's worth, MVP Jay Freedman has created a *.dotm add-in that lets you store certain view settings with the document, even in Word 2013. See http://jay-freedman.info/.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-12-08T11:49:04+00:00

    Yeah I know it just annoys me that they remove these abilities without providing alternatives.

    I tend to keep a lot of scripts in my normal and I get pretty annoyed if it gets wiped out, which is why I would always avoid a method that suggests overwriting people's normal files.

    I am a developer and I maintain our vsto add-in for word, so I have just added some extra user settings into that to allow people to force the default view and a couple of other bits like forcing the navigation pane to open if they want. That seems to work quite well and is easy to distribute.

    If you want to achieve this, just add a routine into the ThisAddin class of the vsto addin and handle the Application.DocumentOpen event to run some code before the document is loaded.

    As for the PreferredView setting, I am wondering whether it is combined with another setting - the key was already present in my registry when I looked but was set to 0. Changing it to 1 for me made opened documents (not new documents) default to web view, But I have tested this on other computers in the same environment that did not have the key present initially and it works on their machines too.

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