How to display margins in Word 2013

Anonymous
2013-01-31T16:21:55+00:00

I just upgraded from Word 2007 to Word 2013.  In the 2007 version, I could display the margins but I haven't been able to find how to do that in Word 2013.  Does anyone know?  Clicking on "show text boundaries" seems to put a lot of lines in the document only.

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  1. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2013-10-10T12:51:10+00:00

    Unfortunately, as you have discovered, text boundaries in Word 2013 are useless. This is due to the new layout engine used in Word 2013. It turns out that Word's developers had no idea that so many users depended on text boundaries, which we have been told were kind of a mistake to begin with, "a feature that was never supposed to be a feature," "a window into the internals of word" that should probably never have been exposed to users.

    The feature "just draws a border around [Word's] internal drawing rectangles," and those have now changed with the switch to a hardware-accelerated display. So Word "is doing precisely what it has always done (drawing borders around internal data structures). Unfortunately, this means that scenarios that used to work accidentally now don’t work the same way. There’s really no way to bring back the old functionality – it truly doesn’t exist."

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-03-30T23:24:38+00:00

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/show-top-and-bottom-margins-HA102498525.aspx

    This shows how, you just double click along the top edge of the document. :)

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-20T23:27:42+00:00

    Thanks to all of you for comments.  It is not the Ruler!  Most of you have it right, and the comment from MS is essential.  Maybe it was a mistake!  There needs to be a method to return "text boundaries" to the mix with the same "look and feel" it had in 2007 - 2010 and before. 

    I now use "crop marks" which shows in the four corners of the document, and that is a "D-" replacement for a "A" "text boundaries"! 

    As with many other items, until one uses the feature, you don't know what you are missing.  As a teacher, I have shown this feature to many, and few disliked it!  No one knew it existed, and I have taught some very talented Word users.

    Let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst with the next version of Office!

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-11-24T12:09:20+00:00

    Go to view option on the top of the page and click on show ruler

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  5. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-22T06:40:24+00:00

    That is a "fix" for something entirely different from the inability of Word 2013 and 2016 to show text boundaries of the type that were displayed in Word 2010.  

    There is NO fix for that inability.

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