Sometimes when you’re working with a document in Microsoft Word, the physical size of some of the elements on your page can be important. This can be difficult to determine on the screen, as what you see on your computer usually doesn’t reflect the actual size when it’s printed.
One way to solve this is to display the ruler on the screen. This lets you determine how large an image, table, column, or other document elements will be when it’s printed. Our tutorial below will show you how to display the ruler in Microsoft Word if it’s not currently visible.
How to Show the Ruler in Word
The steps in this article were performed in Microsoft Word for Office 365, but will work in many earlier versions of Word as well.
Step 1: Open your document in Word.
Step 2: Select the View tab at the top of the window.
Step 3: Check the box to the left of Ruler in the Show section of the ribbon.
You should now see a ruler at the top and left side of the screen, like in the picture below.
Are you working on a document with other people, and the comments in the document keep printing with the document text? Find out how to hide comments when printing in Word if you don’t need them on your physical copy of the document.