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About this lesson
Learn about using multiple windows to view the same or various documents side-by-side.
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Exercise files
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Use Multiple Windows.docx58.2 KB
Quick reference
Use Multiple Windows
Learn about using multiple windows to view the same or various documents side-by-side.
When to use
The option to View Multiple Windows will become a valuable tool as you become an advanced MS Word user. Whenever you need to compare two or more documents, or simply compare far-away pages in one document, the Windows features will help you work efficiently.
Instructions
Click the View Ribbon, and in the Window Group, observe the available options.
Click View Side by Side to view multiple documents simultaneously. When two documents are open, you can synchronize the scrolling (or not.)
Use the Split Window button to split the view of one document into two sections.
Click Switch Windows to quickly switch back and forth from one document to another.
Arrange All windows will horizontally align all open documents or windows.
- 00:05 All right, I want to talk to you about viewing Windows side-by-side.
- 00:08 As you can see on my screen, I do have some green text and red text.
- 00:11 So you can see that they are two separate documents that I've simply arranged
- 00:15 side by side.
- 00:16 Well, how do you do that?
- 00:17 You simply click on the View ribbon.
- 00:18 Now, because these are smaller windows, my ribbons have collapsed.
- 00:22 So it's under the View ribbon, under Window, and
- 00:25 I have a new window which will open up a second window in the same document.
- 00:29 I can Arrange All, which is what I did here, but I told it to arrange vertically.
- 00:32 Notice, I have the vertical button right up here.
- 00:35 The icon here on this Arrange All shows them both horizontally arranged,
- 00:39 which just makes it too crazy, with all the ribbons.
- 00:42 So I choose to go vertical.
- 00:43 We could split the window, so
- 00:44 I could look at two distant places within the same document.
- 00:48 These are already set to view side-by-side in Synchronous Scrolling.
- 00:51 Or I could Reset Window Position, which I am going to go ahead and click and
- 00:55 reset the window position.
- 00:56 Which of course maximized the entire monitor on my screen.
- 01:00 All right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to split one document window, okay?
- 01:05 I'm dealing with one window.
- 01:07 I, for some reason, have something down on page seven that I wanna see.
- 01:11 So I'm gonna go ahead and look at my navigation pane.
- 01:14 And that came on, and as you can see, I have multiple pages in here and
- 01:19 page seven has some text.
- 01:21 But I need to compare that text to page one.
- 01:24 Well, how fun is this, scrolling back and forth from page one to page seven?
- 01:28 It's completely ridiculous, actually.
- 01:29 So we're going to go to the View ribbon, to the Window section.
- 01:33 And in here we have this great button called Split.
- 01:36 So I'm gonna split this window, click.
- 01:38 When I split, look what happened on my screen.
- 01:41 Now, I'm clicked into page one, but
- 01:43 right down here, when I click into this second section, right underneath.
- 01:47 I'm going to collapse that ribbon to buy myself some more room, there we go.
- 01:50 I'm gonna click into the second window underneath, and I'm going to scroll down,
- 01:54 way down here to page seven, using my Navigation pane.
- 01:58 Well here's what happened, on the bottom is page seven.
- 02:01 On the top, watch the navigation pane as your guide right now.
- 02:05 It's showing me that I'm on page one.
- 02:07 Click into the bottom, I'm on page seven.
- 02:08 I'm in the same window, I simply applied the split.
- 02:11 This allows me to see two far away places close together.
- 02:16 This is great.
- 02:17 Now, let me go back to the View ribbon, to the Windows section, and
- 02:22 I wanna turn off that split.
- 02:24 So, my split has turned into a Removed Split.
- 02:26 I'm gonna go ahead and click that to turn it off.
- 02:28 Now I'm back to one full-page document with one window, all right?
- 02:33 So, I just wanted to show you that.
- 02:34 Now, another little trick in here is the Switch Window button.
- 02:37 So I'm gonna bring this other window, and I'm gonna resize that thing.
- 02:42 The beauty is, I can come down here to my task pane and
- 02:44 you can see both window show up.
- 02:46 Now I can click back and forth in here.
- 02:48 But also, on the View ribbon, we do have the Switch Window,
- 02:51 which allows me to do the same thing.
- 02:53 Especially if you have, and there are times I do have, ten documents open.
- 02:57 This helps me really keep track of the name of the one I want to click in rather
- 03:01 than the picture of the one.
- 03:03 So clicking on the name is easier sometimes than figuring out
- 03:06 this tiny picture on which one you want to click on.
- 03:08 So that's today's lesson.
- 03:10 And again, that was the View ribbon.
- 03:12 The Windows section.
- 03:13 It is one of the best kept secrets in Word, and
- 03:17 you'll use it a lot, thanks.
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