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. Stefan Blom 351.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-24T23:12:31+00:00

    Indeed, workarounds have limitations. For now, all we can do is post in the Uservoice forum and/or vote for existing suggestions.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-24T22:19:24+00:00

    Yes Stefan, that will work. But at the expense of disabling all new 2013 and 2016 features.

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  3. Stefan Blom 351.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-24T20:48:53+00:00

    There is a trick to enable the "classic" style for text boundaries in Word 2013 and 2016: You can set compatibility to Word 2010.

    Here's how to do it: Make sure the document that you want to change is the active document in Word. Press Alt+F11 to display the Visual Basic Editor. Press Ctrl+G to activate the Immediate window. Type

    ActiveDocument.SetCompatibilityMode wdWord2010

    and press Enter. Close the Visual Basic Editor and click File | Options. In the Advanced category, scroll down to the bottom where you will now see the list of layout/compatibility options. For "Lay out this document as if created in," select Word 2010. Click OK to close the dialog box and then save the document.

    Everything, including text boundaries, will work the way it did in Word 2010.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-11-24T19:30:53+00:00

    I agree.  The thread has run its course.

    Not many were aware of how usefule the "show margins" were.  That is too bad as I used them all the time.

    The best I have come across are "crop marks" - at least I can see some of the sides and top and bottom, but nothing like the best way.

    I have enjoyed the conversations - Maybe someone at MS will figure out a way for the next version.

    Thanks

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-11-24T17:04:46+00:00

    Almost 5 years without a fix, and the number of recent responses by people who do not even understand the question, strongly suggests this thread has run its course.

    That's not a knock against them; they are just trying to be helpful but don't know what they don't know - a feature they obviously never used and don't understand.

    If we want to see our old text boundaries, we'll need to use a different word processor (I think LibreOffice shows them the way Word used to) or run an old copy of Office. We are not going to see them again from Microsoft. I'm just trying to figure out who finds the current messed up version useful.

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