- [Instructor] In this video,
we'll see how to set the size and dimensions of your page
and adjust your margins.
You might want to do this when you start your document,
but you can make changes to page size and margins
at any time.
I want to start by going to the view ribbon.
And if you don't already have it enabled,
you should turn on the ruler.
That's going to show this ruler up at the top of your page.
You should also make sure you're set to the print layout.
These options will help us see what's happening
as we set up the page.
Then I want to go to the layout ribbon
and we'll start here in the size menu.
Now if you're working in the United States,
you'll see the option for letter or US letter
near the top of this list.
But if you've installed Word in a different region,
this list will be organized differently.
Giving you the most common formats for your region
at the top of the list.
Now if you don't know which page size to use,
the default is usually the most common for your region
so you may never need to adjust anything here.
But if I was starting a document that I needed to send
to somebody in Europe,
I might want to switch to the A4 size.
Okay, next I want to go over to the orientation menu.
And sometimes you want to print your page
in the landscape orientation.
You might think of this as printing with the paper sideways.
This will be easier to see if we use the zoom slider
over here on the right to zoom out.
And now you can see my pages are formatted
with the larger dimension used for the width.
And modern printers are able to handle that change
in orientation.
But I'm going to go back to that menu
and I'm going to switch it back to portrait.
And let's zoom back in using this zoom slider here.
Next, I want to go to the margins menu.
Now it's very rare to ever print anything all the way
to the edge of a sheet of paper.
The margins are the empty space around all four edges
of the page where you do not put any content.
So when you type in a document,
the texts will just stay inside of those margins.
But you can change the size of your margins here.
You'll notice if I select the preset for narrow margins,
the content of my page will move closer to the edges.
On a very long document,
this might mean that you can fit your content
on fewer pages.
But it is an aesthetic choice as well.
You can also go to that margins menu and at the bottom
there'll be an option for a custom margins
or manual margins so you can go in here
and change your margins manually.
Just remember some printers will not be able to print
too close to the edge of the page,
so I do not recommend you do anything smaller
than the narrow margin preset.
All right, I'm going to cancel this
and I want to finish up with some adjustments you can make
using this ruler that we enabled at the top of the page.
Now of course, this gives you a measurement of how wide
and tall your pages are,
but you can also adjust margins here.
The gray space on the left and right side of this ruler
represent the margin settings for your entire document.
And you're not able to change that here.
But if you scroll down to a specific paragraph,
you can change the margins for an individual paragraph.
So I'm just going to click somewhere in this paragraph.
So my cursor is there.
And then if I go up to these arrows
and I want to grab the arrow that's pointing up.
I can drag that left or right.
And I can do that on either side.
And that will effectively change the margins
for that one paragraph.
And if I click into another paragraph,
you'll see everything will reset.
Now on this next paragraph,
you see I have my cursor in the paragraph.
I want to go to the home ribbon
and I'm going to click the button for indent.
And you'll see it adds an indent on the left side
of this paragraph.
Well, it's really just adjusting the margin
for the left side of this one paragraph.
So you can see that arrow has moved up here in the ruler.
And I can adjust that indent by dragging that here.
Once again, if I move to another paragraph,
everything resets.
Now in this third paragraph,
what I want to do is make sure I click at the very beginning
of the first line of the paragraph.
And I'm going to hit the tab key on my keyboard,
which will add a tab space on the first line
of the paragraph.
But when we do that,
we can take a look at the ruler and you can see
that only the arrow that's pointing down has moved over.
So that represents the tab spacing,
and you can drag that left or right to change how much
that paragraph has tabbed over.
And once again, if you move to another paragraph,
everything is reset.
So it's a good idea to know how this all works,
but really most people don't need to change these settings
because of the default page size and margins
are usually exactly what you need.