Fix: Word print view showing no margins and pages appear collated

I’m often asked by friends and family to assist them on frustrating technical issues they can’t resolve by themselves. Thanks to remote access / support software like TeamViewer, this is a piece of cake nowadays.

The solution to such problems isn’t always straightforward though. Just came across a Microsoft Word installation where suddenly the Print view had started using a strange layout with grid lines in the background, no margins and with the consecutive pages showing collated as you scrolled in the document. This defeats the whole WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) concept that most people like about modern word processors.

Removing the grid lines is straightforward from the View menu (Appearance section), but to fix the other issues, the only way I found was, at the Zoom section of the View menu, to change to Multiple Pages, then change to Single Page, then Set Zoom to 100% and finally Set zoom to Page Width. After all is fixed you can then switch those settings to how you prefer them (say zoom 100% instead of page width).

If that doesn’t work, you could try resetting Microsoft Word user settings to their defaults, both an automated and a manual way is offered at:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/822005/how-to-reset-user-options-and-registry-settings-in-word