My eyesight must be failing. I find myself looking at two screens and yet everything I’m trying to read on it is so tiny. A lot of web sites have such small text that I’m resorting to zooming in to make it more comfortable to read. (To zoom in on any website using Google Chrome on Mac, just use CMD+). The same can be said for Word documents. Size 11 font looks fine on a printed page, but when opened on Microsoft Word, it’s close to impossible to read. This is because the page zoom level seems to always default to 120%. From what I’ve read this is supposed to figure out what the page would be sized at in real life based on your screen size etc so that if you hold up a piece of paper the size of the document on the screen should be the same size. For me, it’s not so I was constantly using the page zoom option to zoom in to about 150%. But surely there was an easier way?

One-Click Zoom

I’m using Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac and as it turns out there is no way to change the default page zoom when opening or creating a document, it will always default to something like “120%” – still too tiny. Sure you can use the page zoom option as shown below.

Still too time consuming. I was looking for less clicks. After doing a bit of digging I found that it’s possible to add a button to the toolbar that will automatically change the size of the document to the width of the window. To do this, go to View > Toolbars > Customize Toolbars and Menus…

Click on the Commands tab at the top then select View under Categories. Scroll down under commands until you find “Fit to Window”.

Drag this into the toolbar at the very top. I’ve dragged it right next to the page zoom drop down.

No-Click Zoom

Even having just one button to click is still too annoying. These buttons are tiny (like everything else). When I open up Word I go into keyboard mode, I’m ready to write, so go back to the mouse to zoom in takes a couple more seconds that could kill my train of though. To setup a keyboard shortcut to zoom in, go back to the Customize Toolbars and Menus option under View. Go to Comments and then click on the “Keyboard…” button at the bottom. Click on “View” under Categories then under Commands scroll down to the very bottom until you find “ViewZoomPageWidth” and click on it. In the “Press new keyboard shortcut” field you can enter your shortcut by just using the keys you’d like to use to zoom in. As you can see, I have “Control+Z” setup, but you can use whatever you like.

With that done, click OK and then try it! Hit your keyboard shortcut and watch the magic happen. Now, when you create or open a word document you can hit your keyboard shortcut and zoom in to something that is more readable – no more squinting!

I hope you enjoyed this little tip. If you found this helpful, or if there is anything you’re looking to make easier, or if you have a tip to share, please leave a comment below.