Comments on: How to view pages side by side in Microsoft Word?

Question: How to view pages side by side in Microsoft Word?

bigcheesegump — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:04:17 -0800

Is there any way to view pages in a Microsoft Word (2002) documents side by side instead of top to bottom?

I want to be able to view pages in a single Word (2002) document side by side rather than top to bottom.
The only way I have been able to do this before is to resize the whole window and open a new document and put the other page in the second document. There has to be an easier way. Help!

By: ceribus peribus

ceribus peribus — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:16:42 -0800

I don't have Word 2002 handy, but try looking at the View -> Zoom menu. I think there's a setting in there called something like 'two pages'.

By: b33j

b33j — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:16:54 -0800

View>>Zoom>>many pages, drag and drop.

By: astrochimp

astrochimp — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:27:12 -0800

Are you wanting to view consecutive pages side by side, or non-consecutive pages? I tried the responses so far, but they only seem to allow viewing pages consecutively.

In other words, do you mean something like the Window -> Split feature, where you can view and edit two completely separate parts of the document at the same time (but only as one on top of the other, as far as I can tell)?

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:51:37 -0800

I have Word 2003 myself -- hopefully the UI is similar. In my version, the mode you want can be accessed pretty easily via View --> Reading Layout. This will position the pages side-by-side, like an open book.

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:58:10 -0800

Oh, just saw b33j's answer. I tested it out, and our methods do two different things. The "Many Pages" option basically zooms you aaalll the way out, so you can see everything at once. It shrunk a short story of mine to little tiles with fuzzy lines of text on them. A good way to get a feel for the overall structure of your document, but not easy to work with. The "Reading Layout" way, on the other hand, reformats the page for more comfortable reading, getting rid of the underlining of misspelled words and other distracting UI bits. It also numbers the pages, and lets you page through them with the arrow keys. So, good to read, but a bit more obtuse to edit.

Just thought you'd like to know the differences, to suit whichever purposes you have.

By: b33j

b33j — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:53:37 -0800

Ah, but if you have a nice big screen like I do, you can see two full pages at once, at a readable quality (if you don't choose something tiny ie anything more than 2). Comparing non-consecutive pages, I too would use split. Unless I was comparing two separate documents, in which case I would chose Window>>Compare side by side with document 2 because they scroll at the same rate.

Reading layout doesn't show in a WYSIWYG format, so you can be quite surprised by the printed material.

But I would change my answer above to say drag and select, rather than drag and drop.