on ADD Balance by Madison Wisconsin Criminal Defense Lawyer Charles Kenyon

with input and suggestions from many on
the Microsoft Newsgroups and at Woody's Lounge

Click here to skip past FAQ questions list and other info and go directly to the start of this topic.

Specify text direction in a shape or text box Control + Click the border of the shape or text box that contains the text, and then click Format Shape. In the Format. The Office for Mac user interface changes based on your operating system language preferences. Here's how to change the language of your operating system. Change the direction of text in office for mac.

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This page last revised: 23 Apr 2019 21:43:56 -0400 .
Word automatically inserts section break before and after the text with the new margin settings. Tip: If your document will print on both sides of each page, select the mirror margins check box to adjust the margins for both left and right pages at the same time.

History and Workarounds

Microsoft Word has long had the option of displaying the page margins as 'text boundaries.' Here is a screenshot from Word 97 with them displayed and with the option dialog that turns display on or off:

Note that the Horizontal and Vertical Rulers also display the margins, but this is not quite as intuitive for many users. Here are two screenshots of the same document in Word 2010 with Text Boundaries displayed and not displayed:

Many Word users use this feature to tell them, at a glance, where their page margins are. Shauna Kelly recommended turning them on in her beginner's tutorial. Personally, I found them distracting and simply used the Rulers.

However, the designers at Microsoft were apparently unaware that these dotted lines were even being used for this purpose and changed their text layout engine in Word. This changed the display of these dotted lines to a paragraph boundary rather than a page boundary. There is no way to change this display in Word 2013-2019/365 and it is highly unlikely that it will be changed back.

As reported by Suzanne Barnhill and others, Microsoft's take on this is that text boundaries are 'a feature that was never supposed to be a feature,' 'a window into the internals of word' that should probably never have been exposed to users.

The feature 'just draws a border around [Word's] internal drawing rectangles,' and those have now changed with the switch to a hardware-accelerated display. So Word 'is doing precisely what it has always done (drawing borders around internal data structures). Unfortunately, this means that scenarios that used to work accidentally now don’t work the same way. There’s really no way to bring back the old functionality – it truly doesn’t exist.'

If the document in Word 2013 is opened in compatibility mode to any earlier version of Word the boundaries revert to the previous display. For those interested, here is a link to a lengthy discussion of this change with workarounds:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/how-to-expand-text-boundaries-in-word-2013/bac7738a-7566-4b23-9fb8-d3156fca2c3b?page=1&tm=1395665485247

For sample templates that have two of the discussed workarounds for Word 2013-2019/365 see my Downloads Page.

If you feel that Microsoft should change these back, here is a page where you can let them know. (It has been 'under consideration' since 2015.) More votes won't hurt.

How to Get Rid of Them!

It depends on which version of Word you are using.

Word for Windows

Word 2007 (and later) on Windows

File > (Word) Options > Advanced

Word 97-2003 on Windows

Tools > Options > View

For

Word for the Mac

Word > Preferences > View

Images from Philip Jones' post on the Microsoft Answers Forum.

Word 2016 (and later?) on the Mac

Word 2011 on the Mac

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Copyright 2000-2019 Charles Kyle Kenyon

FAQ provided as an adjunct / hobby as a part of my web site as a criminal defense lawyer.

You might think adding text to the margin of a document is a job for publishing software, but Word can handle it. You can use a negative left indent for text that starts in the left margin and then extends into the body of the document. When you want to position text completely in the left margin, alongside normal text, you can use a text box, a column, or even a table. The text box is the easiest method to implement and maintain.

Negative left indent

This first method for displaying text in the margin is the easiest - you simply apply a negative left indent as follows:
  1. Select the text.
  2. Click the Paragraph group's dialog launcher (the small arrow in the bottom-right corner). In Word 2003, choose Paragraph from the Formatting menu.
  3. Click the Indents and Spacing tab, if necessary.
  4. In the Indention section, enter a negative Left value, such as -.75.
  5. Click OK.
If you apply this format often, consider creating a style. This method is certainly easy, but the text extends to the right, beyond the margin - it isn't confined to the margin. For that, you can use a text box.

Margin text box

When you want to drop text into the margin, as a special visual element, the negative indent won't do. Fortunately, a text box is easy to insert, format, and position. Before you try this, however, be sure to disable Word's drawing layer, as follows:
  1. Click the File tab and choose Options (under Help). In Word 2007, click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2003, choose Options from the Tools menu.
  2. Click Advanced in the left pane. In Word 2003, click the General tab.
  3. In the Editing Options section, uncheck the Automatically Create Drawing Canvas When Inserting AutoShapes options. (In Word 2003, it's in the General Options section.)
  4. Click OK.
You can still use all the drawing tools; you just won't have the added headache of working in layers. Now, let's add the text 'Use Quick Styles' to the left of the formatting paragraph in the example document, as follows:
  1. Click the Insert menu and Click Text Box in the Text group. Then, choose Draw Text Box (from the list below the gallery options). In Word 2003, choose Text Box from the Drawing toolbar (View, Toolbars, Drawing).
  2. Use the mouse to drag and drop a text box of the approximate size in the margin. Notice that the box is about the same height as the paragraph - that will help us center the text later.
  3. Enter the text 'Use Quick Styles.'
  4. On the Contextual Format ribbon, choose Middle from the Align Text dropdown in the Text group.
  5. Choose No Outline from the Shape Outline dropdown in the Shape Styles group.
  6. Next, click the Home tab and click Italics in the Font group and Center in the Paragraph group. You can also change the font's color, face, and so on.
In Print Layout (view), Word easily displays the text. You can move the box or apply most any formatting that you like, as long as the drawing layer is disabled. (For more information on Word's drawing layer, read 10+ ways to avoid drawing layer headaches in Word.)

Word For Mac Text Past Marginal Cost

Anchor to the header

We could easily quit here and have a comprehensive review of adding text to the left margin, but let's push on. You can also anchor margin text to the header and Word will display it on every page! First, open the header by double-clicking the header section. In Word 2003, choose Header and Footer from the View menu. The technique is essentially the same in both versions, but the header section looks different.
With the header in edit mode, and the cursor in the header section, repeat the steps above to add a text box, format it, and position it in the right margin. As you can see below, I used WordArt and rotated the text box. Then, with the header still in edit mode, I moved it to the right of its corresponding section, within the body of the document. When you're done, close the header.
In this case, you probably wouldn't want to display this text on every page, but the technique itself is sound. To edit the text box, you'll have to work in the header - remember, the text box is actually in the header, regardless of where you position it.