side by side view is locked

Question

side by side view is locked

Patrick Lo 0

In microsoft 365, how to swith side by side back to normal view with issue of normal view button is disable?

The zoom page is locked.

Ryan-N 15,925 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-06-30T19:01:54.4533333+00:00

Hi Patrick,

I hope everything is going well on your end.

I’m following up on the support thread we've been working through together. I wanted to check in and see if the information I shared in my previous answer helped resolve the issue you were experiencing.

If you're still experiencing any issues or have further questions, please feel free to reach out at any time. I’m always happy to help if you need anything else.

I want to ensure everything is functioning smoothly and that your experience remains seamless.

Thank you again for your collaboration throughout the troubleshooting process.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Warm regards,

Answer recommended by moderator

Ryan-N 15,925 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi Patrick,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Please try the following steps and let me know whether the issue is resolved:

Select the View tab.
Under Page Movement, choose Vertical instead of Side to Side.

I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. If not, we can work together to resolve this.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments on this post so I can continue to support you.

I look forward to continuing the conversation.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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1 additional answer

Your answer

Ryan-N 15,925 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-06-30T19:01:54.4533333+00:00

Hi Patrick,

I hope everything is going well on your end.

I’m following up on the support thread we've been working through together. I wanted to check in and see if the information I shared in my previous answer helped resolve the issue you were experiencing.

If you're still experiencing any issues or have further questions, please feel free to reach out at any time. I’m always happy to help if you need anything else.

I want to ensure everything is functioning smoothly and that your experience remains seamless.

Thank you again for your collaboration throughout the troubleshooting process.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Warm regards,

Answer 1

The initial post has a couple of mixups in naming things in Word. I believe Ryan-N has guessed correctly what the problem is.

First, there are two different buttons on Word's View ribbon that Microsoft gave almost identical names. The Side to Side button is in the Page Movement group, while the View Side by Side button is in the Window group.

Side to Side causes Word to display pages from a single document to appear next to each other horizontally. To do that it forces the zoom factor to about half size and disables the zoom controls. (That clue let Ryan guess correctly that you meant Side to Side was turned on; the Vertical button turns it off.) The View Side by Side button is enabled only when there are two or more documents open at the same time, and it places two of those windows next to each other.

Second, Word does not have a "normal view" or a "normal view button". What most people think of as the "normal" view is what Word calls Print Layout view. The Side to Side and Vertical buttons appear on the View ribbon only when the document is in Print Layout view, not in any of the other views.