Choosing The Right View In Word

Word includes different views that change the parts of your document that are displayed on the screen and determines how much of your system’s resources are used. Knowing the purpose of each view will help you to select the correct one.

Word includes the following views:

• Print Layout
• Normal
• Web Layout
• Outline

The Print Layout view shows you exactly how your printed document will look, including non-printing formatting marks. The upside to this view is that you can see the entire layout of your document. The downside is that more system memory is used. Generally this view should be used when working with the page layouts, tables and graphics.

The Normal view displays the body of your document but does not include the page layout. As a result, it uses less system memory than the Print Layout view. So for better system performance, you should use the Normal view when working with text.

The Outline view displays Heading Styles and any additional styles attached to an Outline level. This view is ideal to use when you need to rearrange pages keeping in mind that it does utilize more system memory than the Normal view.

Finally, there is the Web layout view. This view shows you how your document will look when posted on the Web. Obviously, the only time you will want to work within this view is when you are preparing to post your document on the Web.

If you are running Word 2003, you will see two additional views: Reading layout and Thumbnails. The Reading layout view displays text in a large, more readable font. The Thumbnails layout displays each page in your document as a thumbnail image.