Mirrored Margins in MS Word

I was recently contact by someone who wanted to modify an MS Word doc so that the outside margins in his student workbook were large enough for the students to take notes in. This is such a very simple thing to do that I thought I’d just treat this as a freebie and describe the process here.

At a default, MS word thinks of its margins as left and right — and then they will be the same on every page. But if you change the “Multiple pages” setting to “Mirror Margins,” then this will change to instead be inside and outside. With this setting, the inside margin is the side of the page nearest the spine of the book. On odd-numbered pages, the inside is on the left, and on even-numbered pages, the inside is on the right.

Doing the deed in Windows

In MS Word 2010 for Windows:

1. Open the document
2. On the “Page Layout” ribbon, click the “Margins” icon
3. Choose “Custom Margins” at the very bottom of the list.
4. On the “Page Setup” dialog box that comes up, click on the “Margins” tab.
5. Choose “Mirror Margins” in the Multiple Pages field (near the middle of the window).
6. In the fields with the measurements of the margins, change the outside margin to be something nice and big… like maybe 2.5″

Getting it done in Word for Mac

In MS Word for Mac 2011:

1. Open the document
2. On the “Layout” ribbon, click the “Margins” icon
3. Choose “Custom Margins” at the very bottom of the list.
4. On the “Document” dialog box that comes up, click on the Margins tab.
5. Check the “Mirror margins” checkbox near the bottom of the window.
6. In the fields with the measurements of the margins, change the outside margin to be something nice and big… like maybe 2.5″