Two-page view in Word, shouldn't the first page be on the right?

Question

Greetings Superusers,

I'm putting together a lengthy document in Word, and it's going to be printed and bound duplex.

I've put page-numbers "outside" etc, and all is pretty.

The problem is, in the "Two Pages" view, it puts p1 on the left, then p2 on the right, then p3 below on the left, and p4 on the right.

p1   p2
p3   p4
p5   p6

Shouldn't this be slightly different though? When I get to print it, p1 is on the right, not the left, so the preview should go

     p1
p2   p3
p4   p5
p6

Because when I "open" the book, it's pages 2 and 3 that are side-by-side.

This makes layout tweaking confusing, because it's not instantly obvious which pages will be "visible" to the reader at the same time together. Have I missed something?

I can't just put a blank page first, because that would bugger up the printing, as the printer automatically duplexes and binds etc.

(Office 2008, by the way)

Answer 1

The problem here is that the "two page view" you're using is just a two-page zoom, not a final print layout.

I would recommend putting the blank page in for your reviewing, and then take it out just before print time.

Answer 2

Two pages are just for preview. Just be sure that you select "Book fold" in Page setup dialog under "Multiple pages" since that will produce desired effect once book is printed.

If you really need "real" page view in two page view, only solution that I am aware of is to insert blank page on start.

Answer 3

Excellent question. I have the same problem. Here's a workaround.

1. Insert a dummy page at the front. End the page with a section break.

2. Renumber the pages in the document, starting with page 1 for the first real page of your document.

Answer 4

My definitive solution:

When a first dummy page contains a section-break to odd pages, the page 2 disappears but is still there (just print the absolute pages 1-3 to see it). The hidden page 2 is exactly the same as page 3. So printing from page 3 (which is page 1 of section 2) is messy because both are printed and other problems...

To solve this, we need to add another section to contain all the mess, it means 2 more dummy pages: the first dummy page contains the section-break to odd page, the second dummy page contains just a normal page-break, and the third dummy page contains a section-break to next page. With this configuration, the real document starts at section 3. This section is totally clean!; it is possible to number and print only the pages of that section (using "P1S3-" syntax for the range), to view in Print-layout the mirrored pages at their correct position, with the correct mirrored-margins, gutter, numbering, indents etc.

It was important for me to find a workaround to this 15++ year-old bug because I am working on booklets where the odd pages contain a translation, line for line, of the even ones; so a real mirrored working view was a must.

Answer 5

Apparently,

...if you have enabled either "Mirror margins" or "Different odd and even" headers/footers, Print Preview (but no other view) will show facing pages.

(source).

So, it doesn't work in "normal" two page view. Rather annoying indeed...

Answer 6

I love open source word processing programs, but I also like this behavior:

Word displays BOTH SIDES of the first page when you open a print preview, then displays FACING pages as you scroll down through your document. The secret is that as you open the print preview, the back side of the first page is displayed next to the first page, and then jumps from the right side of the screen to the left as you scroll down through the print preview.

Once you're used to it, you may find that you prefer to see both sides of your first page when you open a print preview.

Answer 7

The layout is reversed in the Two Pages view but is shown well (even page on the left side) when showing Two Pages in the Preview mode. Of course, editing is not possible in this mode, unfortunately.

Answer 8

I have an intriguing addition to this Q & A. I have spent a humungous amount of time trying to find the right answer by trying different section breaks, finally hitting upon the Odd (or Right Hand) section break solution set forth above. I had the whole 300 page novel laid out, looking real nice with sequentially changing headers for different chapters, with the first page of each chapter being the right hand page, and different page number styles using lower case roman numerals for the introductory pages, and arabic numbers for the main text. Which worked fine, as long as the last page of a chapter ended on a left hand or even numbered page.

At this point I needed a half blank page. (There are two kinds of blank pages in Word and when you are looking at a lot of pages the eye sometimes becomes weary and fails to note this: (1) the back side of a page with printing on it, which is a half page, and (2) a full page front and back. Word can do either, provided you enter the right kind of section break. Which is another long story and not the point I want to make now, a point for which I have no answer. (So I continue.)

So as to not lose my work, after I had gone thru 300 pages for the 10th time (because every time you change the page sequence at the beginning, the whole document changes and headers and footers go crazy), I made a copy of my novel and worked on that. Problem solved. It printed fine. So then I went back to the original, because I had lost some header and footer settings in working on the changes on the copy, and made the odd page correction above.

But lo and behold, now the original document would not print! And I have gone crazy trying to find out why. The best advice I can give is one I read months ago. Bite the bullet and hire someone who knows what they are doing.

Answer 9

A couple of suggestions:

• To make sure your document is breaking in the places you want, always make sure your new section begins on an odd page. You can easily see this in two-page view in Word. If it's breaking on an even page, enter a manual page break (Ctrl Enter) on the page before.

• If you want to see true double-sided, save the document in PDF format. In Adobe Acrobat ver. 8, choose View > Page Display > Two-Up. You will see your page 1 by itself, followed by page 2 on the left and 3 on the right.

I do agree with you: such a basic function should be part of Word. But that's Microsoft...

Steven

Answer 10

Some problems with blank page insertion are:

1) Odd pages become even, and so on. This has a dramatic effect on headers and footers when the blank page is removed.

2) "First page" header and footer configuration is now confused. You can disable this and use section breaks instead. Not sure what happens when page is deleted and section break is removed however.

Paul

Answer 11

Word tries so hard to be a document layout application and comes up short with every version. (We still can't rotate tables or rotate pages without rotating the header/footer.)

Showing the correct 2-page spread reading view in 2-page view is only logical, but logic has hardly been a guiding factor in Microsoft Office development. What you can do in Word is have a Page 0 (if your page numbers are 1, 2, 3, ... and not any other format), then you can print pages 1 to whatever and avoid having to remove this dummy page.

If your document starts on page i (or a), insert a Section Break (Next Page) at the top of your document, go into the header of the (now) second page (your first page) and turn off Link to Previous and do the same for the footer (probably not necessary, but better safe than sorry). Still in the header or footer of this second page: edit the Page Number Format to Start at i (or a). Now go to the header of the first (dummy) page and edit the Page Number Format to 1,2,3... numbering and Start at 0.

When you print the document, always print Pages: 1- (no ending number) to print all but page 0.

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@Cylindric Without the numbering Starting with 0, inserting a blank page will throw off numbering even though the pages will be viewed like a spread, and you'll have to remove the blank page 1 before updating TOC, cross-references, etc. and before printing. Only remembering to print from page 1 is better than all those other steps.

Answer 12

A simple (but incomplete) answer: Use a print range of "2-". Tarah! Unfortunately this doesn't print the first page, but everything else is perfect. Inserting dummy pages DOES NOT work if, like me, you need to have new sections start on odd pages.