Text Doesn't Wrap at Margin in Draft View

Dave recently upgraded his copy of Word and noticed that the text displayed in Draft view wraps on the screen differently than it used to. In his earlier version of Word the text would wrap at the right margin, as it was shown on the Ruler. In the newer version the text extended past the right margin (as shown on the Ruler) and only wraps when the right side of the document window is reached.

The problem being described isn't really a problem. It is a "feature" of Word that has been available for many, many years. You can control this feature by following these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Advanced at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Scroll in the window until you see the Show Document Content section. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The advanced options in the Word Options dialog box.

4. Make sure the Show Text Wrapped Within the Document Window check box is cleared.
5. Click OK.

The check box in step 4, when selected, makes the text in Draft and Outline views extend the full width of the document window, without regard to where the margin is set. This only affects what you see on the screen; it does not affect any printouts. If the check box is cleared, then the margins are minded and the text wraps where you expect it to wrap.

The need for this feature is rooted in history. The original intent of Draft view (which used to be called Normal view) was to speed up work by foregoing an exact WYSIWYG format. In this view, Word does not worry about line breaks, margins and page breaks in the same manner as in the Print Layout view. Likewise, graphics objects are not displayed. The point is to release computer resources to facilitate doing the work of entering and editing content. The purpose of the Show Text Wrapped Within the Document Window setting is to allow even more information to appear on-screen, since WYSIWYG isn't being paid attention to in Draft view anyway.

It is not unusual for people, these days, to bypass using Draft view and instead using Print Layout view. The Show Text Wrapped Within the Document Window setting has no bearing on this view, since the essence of Print Layout view is to show a very close representation of what your final printout will look like. If you want to use Draft view, there is nothing wrong with that (I do it all the time), but you'll need to pay attention to settings such as the Show Text Wrapped Within the Document Window check box so that your display looks like you want it to.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10690) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.