How do I get Microsoft Word to default to single-page view?

Hello CursedAlien,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and hope you are doing great today!

I'm Chris Jordan and I'd be glad to assist you with the questions.

Concerning your query, can you please try to follow this procedure below.

1. Open Microsoft Word.
2. Go to the Layout tab and click on Margins, select Custom Margins.
3. Select Normal on Multiple pages and click Set As Default and OK.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to send them back.

Best regards,

Chris Jordan

That's literally just one of the ways to fix it manually. I've tried that before. Doing that didn't make word realize that I only ever want to work in single-page view. So basically you've just given me another way to fix it manually, and not a permanent solution.

The two-page display setting is part of the View > Zoom settings, not part of the Page Layout settings. Unfortunately, there is no Default button for this. In theory, Word should always open with the same settings it had the last time it was closed, but that isn't always how it behaves.

I have written an add-in that saves all of the View settings in each document as you save it, and restores those settings the next time you open it. You don't have to do any macro programming, because it's all in the add-in. To install it:

• Download the file SaveViewLocMulti.zip from https://jay-freedman.info/ .
• Extract the file SaveViewLocMulti.dotm from the zip file and save it in the folder %appdata%\Microsoft\Word\Startup. (When you type or paste that path in the address bar of Windows File Explorer and press Enter, the environment variable %appdata% expands to the proper location in your Windows profile.)
• Start or restart Word, The add-in loads as Word starts because of its location in the Startup folder. Its macros run automatically when you save and when you open an existing document that contains the View information.

You won't see anything to tell you the macros are running, but it will make sure that a document that was saved at 100% zoom will reopen at 100%.

I thought that this worked, but then I had a nasty surprise: It once again defaulted to two-page view. I had to manually fix it again. Your solution was not permanent.

Jay's add-in has the advantage that it restores the behavior of older versions of Word that let you store the view and zoom with each document or template.

An alternative might be to install an auto macro that sets the zoom and view of each document that you open. The downside of such a macro is that many recent security settings may prevent the macro from running, for example when a document opens in protected view.