Yes, Word is mostly WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) or at least pretty close, but sometimes you just need to see the final product as you are creating it. You can always flip back and forth between editing and Print Preview, but that’s a bit of a hassle. Fortunately, there is an option that used to be quickly available in Word that is still there…just hidden a bit. We’ll step you through the process of adding the button to give you access to that alternative editing method.
The first step is accessing the current settings for the toolbar. Click on the blue File tab on the left end of the ribbon, then select Options.
That will take you to the Options dialogue box. Once there, click on Quick Access Toolbar.
Now you need to “Choose commands from: All Commands”, then scroll down about three-quarters of the way to find the Print Preview Edit Mode command.
Add it to your toolbar and close the dialogue box. You should now have a new button available.
Click on that button and you’ll be put into a special Print Preview mode. By default, the Magnifier is turned on each time you get here, so once you find the pages you want to edit, just turn it off. Now you can adjust things around and see the changes to the printed page as you make them. Spend some time here and you’ll find all kinds of tricks to get paragraphs and pages to fit nicely. You can even see the blank pages in the final version that you’ve created with Odd and Even Page Breaks. (Of course, you can’t edit those blank pages, so your cursor will show a red not sign if you try.)
If you’re into shortcuts as much as I am, you’ll be happy to know that tapping on Alt will bring up shortcut hints, showing that (in my case), hitting 5 will go straight there.
Now that you can see what you’re doing, you could even work out the details of doing the formatting and layout of a book. Good luck!