New Page Appears at Right of First Page

When Paulus creates a new, blank document he can start typing. When he gets nearly to the end of the first page of the document, he gets a new page at the right-hand side of the existing page. This is not what he wants, though. He used to get the new page at the bottom of the existing page, which is what he prefers. Paulus wonders if it is some new Microsoft update that made this change.

When you are working with your document in Print Layout view, where new pages appear depends on three things—the resolution of your monitor, the size of your document window, and the way you have Word configured. With high-resolution monitors, it is very easy to fit multiple pages horizontally on the screen, which many people prefer. So, Word allows you to display pages that way.

If you enlarge your document window enough (for instance, if you zoom in to 150% or 200%), then even on a high-resolution monitory you will see only one page at a time on the screen. The exact zoom percentage will vary, again based on the resolution of your monitor.

You can control how many pages you see horizontally on the screen by displaying the View tab of the ribbon and, in the Zoom group, using the following tools:

• One Page. This tool ensures you see a single page at a time, horizontally speaking.
• Multiple Pages. This tool allows Word to automatically display multiple pages, horizontally, depending on the size of the Word program window and the zoom setting you are using.

If you want to ensure that pages don't appear to the right of the first page, then you should click the One Page tool. If you cannot select either the One Page or the Multiple Pages tool, then you should take a look at the Vertical Movement group on the View tab of the ribbon. You'll want to click the Vertical tool, and then the One Page and Multiple Pages tools should become active.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (4316) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.