Unlocking the Power of the View Tab in Microsoft Word
Legal pros understand the importance of efficiently managing long and intricate documents. Yet, many Word users may not have fully explored the myriad of tools available in the View tab of the Microsoft Word ribbon. This often-overlooked section is a treasure trove of features designed to enhance your document navigation and review experience. From adjusting your document’s layout to using advanced navigation panes, the View tab offers a suite of tools that can significantly streamline your workflow. In this blog post, we’ll delve into these features, highlighting how they can help you manage and navigate complex legal documents with ease.
The View tab in Microsoft Word is packed with tools that can help you navigate and manage your documents more effectively. In the Ribbon, each tab is divided into Groups. Here are some of the key features by Group.
Views Group
Read Mode: This tool optimizes your document for reading, making it easier to focus on the content without distractions from editing tools. Toggle to read mode to remove the Ribbon from view and scroll through a document as if you are reading a book (scrolling left to right instead of up and down). The Read mode also removes your ability to edit the document so just mouse over and click on the bar at the top of the screen, click View and Edit to be able to edit the document.
Print Layout: This is the default view, showing how your document will look when printed. It’s useful for making sure your formatting is exactly right.
Web Layout: This view shows how your document will appear as a webpage, which is handy if you’re creating content for online publication.
Outline: This tool allows you to view your document in outline form, making it easier to organize and navigate through large documents by collapsing and expanding sections. If your document is not using Styles to control formatting this view will not be as useful.
Draft: This view is useful for quick editing, as it strips away most of the formatting and focuses on the text. Both Outline and Draft view shows any applied Styles in the left margin.
Immersive Group
Focus: This view is like Read mode. It removes the Ribbon from view so you can focus on just the text of the document. However, you can still edit the document, and you will scroll down through the pages, instead of the book style layout in Read mode.
Immersive Reader: This view is a fantastic way to help you focus on a document for proof reading. Click on the Immersive Reader and a new contextual menu will appear. You can increase the column width to stretch across the page, change the page color (white text on a black background), expand the line focus so that you highlight one, three or five lines at time so you can’t as easily skim past text, increase or decrease text spacing to force yourself to slow down your reading, divide words by syllables, and even have your document read aloud to you.
Page Movement Group
Side to Side: While the default movement of a Word document scrolls down, you can switch to side to side. Side to side view allows you to read a document like a book, flipping pages. Unlike Read mode, it does not remove the Ribbon from view, and you can still edit the document. In Side to Side view you will get some different options in the Zoom group. You can choose to see your document thumbnails, which can be useful for quickly jumping to a specific page.
Show Group
Ruler: Useful if you need to make precise changes to your margins.
Gridlines: This view is primarily useful for tablets or touch screens if you are adding ink notes or annotations to a page.
Navigation Pane: This feature opens a sidebar that lets you quickly jump to different sections of your document, search for text, and see an overview of your headings. If you are using Styles the navigation view lets you jump through the document to headings and subheading and move content in the document by dragging and dropping a section heading, If you right click on a heading in the Navigation pane you can promote or demote a heading, insert a heading or subheading before or after an existing heading and more. You can also view Pages to preview your document pages in thumbnail in the Navigation pane. Click on “Results” to search your document. You can also do regular or advanced Find and Replace, use advanced search parameters such as “match case” “use wildcards” “find all word forms” and more in Find Options and save your search options as default. All these options can be viewed by clicking the small arrow to the left of the magnifying glass icon. The Navigation pane is incredibly handy, so consider adding it to your Quick Access toolbar by right clicking on the icon and choosing “Add to Quick Access Toolbar.”
Zoom Group
Zoom: You can adjust the zoom level of your document to get a closer look at details or see more of the page at once. You can also use the Zoom slider in the Status bar at the bottom right of the Word software.
100%: If you Zoom in on a document, click the 100% icon to return to the default Zoom level.
Page Width: If you want to quickly Zoom your document to fit your screen, just click “Page Width” to quickly adjust the view for maximum reading comfort.
Window Group
New Window: If you have a multi-page document, click New Window to open each page in a different instance of Word. Any change you make will be saved in the document. This is just a way to easily bounce between pages without scrolling away.
Arrange All: Quickly tile all documents you have open in different windows.
Split: This feature splits your document into two panes, so you can view and edit different parts of the document simultaneously.
Switch Windows: If you have multiple documents open, this tool lets you quickly switch between them.
Macros Group
Macros: View or record Macros with this button.
SharePoint Group
Properties: Another button to add to your Quick Access toolbar. Clicking Properties takes you to the document properties so you can remove metadata (Inspect), Protect the document, view version history, share, open the file location, and see the file properties.
Conclusion
These tools can significantly enhance your efficiency, especially when working with long and complex legal documents. Add a few of these views to your Quick Access Toolbar so you can easily find them and remember to use them to make document generation and editing a sight easier.