Blank Pages

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Blank pages can occur for several reasons. Blank pages can appear throughout the document or at the end of the document.

At the Bottom/End of the Document

This generally occurs because you've got non-printing characters at the bottom of your document.

Method 1 Fix: Deleting Unnecessary Characters

Turn your Show/Hide button on.
Hit View and choose either Print Layout or Page Layout.
Hit Ctrl+End.
Backspace until all non-printing characters have been deleted.

Method 2 Fix: For Documents with Tables Only

If you have a table on your first page and cannot remove that last paragraph that is the only thing on the next page, select that paragraph return and change the font size to 1. You cannot select font size 1; you must type it into the font size box and hit Enter.

Throughout the Document

Different printers may need more space at the bottom of the sheet of paper to allow the rollers to pull the paper through the printer. Rule of thumb: the less you paid for your printer, the more of the paper it uses for rolling. Thus, if you set your document up for a printer that allows a 0.5" margin at the bottom, and then take it to another PC that is connected only to a printer that requires a 0.6" margin at the bottom, you may end up with extra pages because the page breaks (manual or automatic) now break 'sooner.'

Tip 49: Minimum Margins for Your Printer

Here's how to determine the minimum margins for your printer:

Open a blank document.
Set all margins to zero and hit OK. You should be told that your margins are outside of the printable area and should choose to Fix or Ignore it.
Choose FIX.
Go back into the margins and see what they have been changed to. These are the minimum margins of which your printer is capable. You may want to set your Word default margins to be at least as large as the minimums.

For best results, determine the minimum margins you'll use for all documents. I like to use 1.0" margins all the way around.

To change Word's default margins for your computer, hit File → Page Setup, choose the Margins tab. Change your margins and hit the DEFAULT button at the lower-left of the dialog. This will NOT change existing documents, only new ones.

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