Chapter 8: Mastering Page Setup and Pagination

Overview

Documents need some planning. But even after the most thoughtful planning, document designs sometimes travel down unplanned paths, seemingly on their own. Maybe a single-column publication suddenly becomes a multiple-column document, or a piece that wasn’t supposed to be a booklet turns out to work perfectly in a booklet format. In these types of cases, everything changes-margins, page orientation, column specifications, headers, and footers. While these kinds of changes might seem daunting-especially when you are working under a tight deadline-Microsoft Office Word 2007 can help you efficiently adapt to all sorts of changes with a little know-how.

Whether you successfully plan your work in advance or change strategies midstream, the page setup features of Office Word 2007 help you control page layout. Specifically, when you plan or redesign your pages, you can make choices about page setup specifications and options such as the following:

• Headers, footers, and page number settings

• Top, bottom, left, and right margin sizes

• Document orientation

• Paper size and the tray or cartridge to use when printing

• Whether to print one or two pages per sheet

• Page and text breaks

• Text flow and spacing for languages that use vertical orientation

This chapter covers the preceding topics as well as related page setup features in Word 2007.

Inside Out-Planning Your Page Setup 

Although you can select your page settings at any point during the creation or editing of your document, taking time up front to plan basic document settings can save you time, trouble, and corrections later. In addition, if you’re creating a standard document for others in your department to use or that you will use repeatedly, getting the basics down early can ensure that you don’t have to open multiple documents to readjust margin settings, page size, and other layout options. In those cases, you can use an existing document as a guide or create a template to make the application of current settings and future changes easier.

Planning up front is usually best; however, Word 2007 enables you to change direction whenever you want. Keep in mind that when you make drastic changes to an existing document’s setup-such as changing the page from portrait to landscape orientation-the contents of your page will be dramatically affected. For instance, if you switch to landscape orientation after you’ve entered text and graphics, set headers and footers, and created section divisions in portrait orientation, you’ll most likely have to adjust several settings to display your information properly on the shorter, wider page.