Why is there no space at the top of my Word document?

Throughout your ETD, all text must start at the very top of the page. It is common for students to have trouble maintaining this consistency — often thanks to difficulty with Microsoft Word. The below instructions should help to specify the relevant settings in Microsoft Word and offer some helpful tips to maintaining consistency throughout your document.

1. Check that your top margin is set to 1 inch.
2. Check the page margin layout settings.  On the “Layout” tab, in the “Margins” menu (found on the far left of the navigation bar), click “Custom Margins.” A “Page Setup” menu will appear. Under the “Layout” tab of this pop-up menu, make sure “Vertical alignment” is set to “Top.”
3. Make sure you don’t have extra space in the header. Double-click on the header and hit the down arrow. If there are extra lines in the header, below the page number, delete them.
4. Make sure there isn’t extra space between your text and the top of the page. All text must start on the first line at the very top of the page, just after the 1 inch margin line.

To more easily identify spacing inconsistencies as you scan your document, enable the “Gridlines” view:

If you are having trouble moving your text to the top of the page, check the “Header from Top” and “Footer from Bottom” settings.

You can show or hide white space at the top and bottom of pages in Microsoft Word documents. If you hide white space, you won’t be able to see headers, footers or top and bottom margins in Print Layout View. The gray space that typically appears at the top and bottom of pages as you scroll through your document will also disappear. If you want to show or hide spaces between words, you'll need to click Show/Hide ¶ on the Home tab in the Ribbon.

Microsoft Word gives you options to adjust the page setup in order to create a custom layout for your business documents. To change the amount of white space around the text body, you have to change the default margin settings. You may want to do this if, for example, you need to remove the top margin on a document to raise the text higher up the page and allow more text or graphic elements to fill the bottom of the page.

1. 1.

   Open the Microsoft Word program to display a blank document window. To change a saved document, open that file.

2. 2.

   Click the “Page Layout” tab on the ribbon to show the groups of commands, including Page Setup.

3. 3.

   Click the “Margins” button in the Page Setup group to display a list of options for margin settings.

4. 4.

   Click the “Custom Margins” link at the bottom of the list to open the Page Setup dialog box. This dialog box includes three tabs: Margins, Paper and Layout.

5. 5.

   Click the “Margins” tab to view the sections that change the margin settings.

6. 6.

   Click the bottom arrow in the “Top” text box in the Margins section. Keep clicking this arrow to decrease the value to “0” and raise the top margin. You can also type “0” in the “Top” text box. The “Preview” box displays this new margin setting.

7. 7.

   Click the text box in the “Apply to” section to display a list of options. Click on a preferred option: “This section,” “This point forward” or “Whole document.”

8. 8.

   Click “OK” in the Page Setup window to close it. A Microsoft Word dialog box might open with this message: “One or more margins are set outside the printable area of the page.” Your printer or paper size may need a minimum margin setting to ensure all the text can print. Click “Fix” to allow a narrow .24-inch top margin for prints. Click “Ignore” to keep the “0” margin setting for on-screen viewing. The Microsoft Word dialog box closes and your edited document displays.

   Whether you've worked with Microsoft Word for years, or have just begun mastering it, you may leave many of its preferences set to their defaults, rather than figure out how or whether to change them. When you work with someone else's files, their configuration may differ from your typical setup. A document with no visible top margin can reflect file-specific options, Word settings or both, all of which you can change quickly, if you know where to look.

   Margin Settings

   1. The least likely cause of an invisible top margin provides the most obvious explanation for your Microsoft Word document's appearance. If you set your top margin to 0, you have no margin to display. Word does its best to prevent you from establishing this setting, in part because virtually no desktop output devices can print all the way to the top of a sheet of paper, but you can override its objections. To verify the setting in your current document, switch to the Page Layout tab of the Word ribbon and click on the "Margins" item to open Word's gallery of preset options. The Custom Margins link at the bottom of the gallery opens the dialog box in which you review, enter or revise these settings.

   Viewing Mode

   1. If you're accustomed to working in Microsoft Word's default Print Layout document view, you may not have seen or used the program's alternative on-screen arrangements. As its name suggests, Print Layout shows your file as it will appear when you print it, complete with margins. For various reasons, the remaining view options -- Read Mode, Web Layout, Outline and Draft -- omit margin display. Read Mode removes margins, so your document content requires as little on-screen real estate as possible. Web Layout focuses on content, not formatting. Outline presents your text in hierarchical form. Draft view emphasizes text over presentation to facilitate document editing and review. You can access three of these view modes -- Read Mode, Print Layout and Web Layout -- with a single click on a corresponding icon at the bottom of the document window, or choose among all five modes on the Views tab of the ribbon.

   White Space Defaults

   1. Even in Print Layout view, your margins can vanish in response to the way you configure Microsoft Word's white space preference. This setting can remove the top and bottom margins from view, devoting as little screen space as possible to items other than document elements. If you point your cursor at the top or bottom of a document page that doesn't display white space, the cursor changes into a pair of arrows, one pointing up and the other pointing down. Double-click when this special cursor appears and your margins will return.

   Other Considerations

   1. Microsoft Word documents can contain multiple sections, each with its own margin settings. Although document views and white space defaults apply throughout a file, varying section-specific settings can change what you see as you page through your text. If you alter the top margin in one section of a multi-section file, the other sections remain unchanged. To reset the margin defaults for all your future documents, open the Margins gallery's "Custom Gallery" option and click on the "Set as Default" button to make your current dimensions stick.

   Version Information

   1. Information in this article applies to Microsoft Word 2013 for Windows. It may differ slightly or significantly with other versions.