How to Change the Paper Size in Microsoft Word for Office 365

Have you received a document from someone in another country, and it won’t print? Figuring out this problem can be difficult, because the possible reasons are numerous. It could be your printer, it could be an issue with your computer, but it could also be a setting in the document itself.

One issue that I have encountered in this scenario involves documents sent from people that live in countries where the A4 paper size is standard. I live in the United States, where we use the Letter paper size by default. But if you attempt to print an A4 document, typically your printer won’t be able to because you don’t have A4 paper. Luckily you can resolve this issue by simply changing the page size to letter, then trying to print again.

If you also use Google docs ot edit documents, then our Google Docs page size tutorial can show you how to adjust this setting there as well.

How to Use a Different Paper Size in Microsoft Word

The steps in this article were performed in Microsoft Word for Office 365, but will work in most other versions of Word.

Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Click the Layout tab at the top of the window.

Step 3: Select the Size button in the Page Setup section of the ribbon.

Step 4: Choose the desired page size from the list of options.

Note that changing the paper size will likely affect the layout of the document. Be sure to go through the document after making this change and fix any issues that may have arisen due to making the paper size larger or smaller.

Are you seeing strange marks in your document, such as a backwards “P” when you create a new one? Find out how to disable formatting marks in Word and make those marks disappear.