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When you start typing in a Word document that is using the Normal template, all of the text that you enter will be left aligned by default. This means that the first letter on each line will be against the left margin of the page. This is the standard for most corporations and institutions, and is the most common alignment format used in documents.
But sometimes a part of your document will need to be centered on the page, either horizontally or vertically. Our tutorial below will show you how to center text in Microsoft Word using either the horizontal or vertical alignment option so that you can achieve the desired display result for your document.
The summary section above gives a brief overview of how to horizontally center text in Word, but this section provides pictures as well if you would like a little more information. Note that I am using Microsoft Word 2013 in the images below, but the process is the same in most other versions of Word as well.
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Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft Word.
Step 2: Use your mouse to highlight the text that you want to center horizontally.
Step 3: Click the Home tab at the top of the window.
Step 4: Select the Center button in the Paragraph section of the ribbon.
We outlined how to vertically center text in the summary section above, but this section will provide images as well. This section was performed using Microsoft Word 2013.
Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft Word.
Step 2: Use your mouse to select the text that you want to center vertically. If you wish to center the entire document you can skip this step.
Step 3: Click the Page Layout tab at the top of the window.
Step 4: Click the Page Setup button in the Page Setup section of the ribbon. It’s the tiny button at the bottom-right corner of the section.
Step 5: Click the dropdown menu to the right of Vertical alignment, then choose the Center option.
Step 6: Select the dropdown menu to the right of Apply to, then choose the option that fits your needs. If you selected text earlier, then the Selected sections option will only vertically center that selected text. The Whole document option will vertically center the entire document, and the This point forward will vertically center all of the document text after the point at which your mouse cursor is currently located. Some of the vertical alignment options may not appear depending on the selected text’s locations, whether or not any text is selected, or the composition of the document.
Step 7: Click the OK button to apply the vertical centering.
If you have a table in your document and need to center the text in one of the table cells, then you get to use some table-specific centering options. By default the data in your table will be horizontally centered at the top of the table cell, but there are options that let you customize the alignment within a cell.
Step 1: Open the document containing the table text that you want to center.
Step 2: Click inside the cell containing the data you wish to center.
Step 3: Click the Layout tab at the top of the window under Table Tools.
Step 4: Click the desired alignment option in the Alignment section of the ribbon.
Does your document have a title page, but you need to number your pages and skip that title page? Find out how to start page numbering on the second page in Word so that a page number doesn’t display on the title page.
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Last updated: December 12, 2016
Microsoft Word 2013 has a lot of formatting options, although some of the less commonly used ones can be difficult to locate. One of the settings that can be difficult to find is the selector for vertical alignment. But this is an option that is adjustable, which means that you are able to vertically center text in Word 2013.
When you are adjusting your document’s vertical alignment, you will have the option to set it as Top, Center, Justified or Bottom. For the purposes of this tutorial we will be selecting the Center option, but you can experiment with each of the different options if you are not sure which one is best for your situation.
The default vertical-alignment setting in Microsoft Word 2013 is “Top.” This means that if you create a new document and enter one line of text, it will appear at the top of the page. The steps below will change that setting so that the single line of text would appear at the center of the page instead. This is ideal if you need to vertically center a title in your Word document.
Our steps below will give you a document where every page is centered vertically. This is because we will be selecting the Whole Document option when applying our vertical alignment. However, you can also choose the option to apply your vertical alignment From this point forward, which will cause everything after your current location to be centered vertically instead.
Step 1: Open your document in Word 2013.
Step 2: Click the Page Layout tab at the top of the window.
Step 3: Click the Page Setup button at the bottom-right corner of the Page Setup section of the navigational ribbon.
Step 4: Click the Layout tab at the top of the window.
Step 5: Click the drop-down menu to the right of Vertical alignment, then select the Center option.
Step 6: Confirm that Whole document is selected in the drop-down menu to the right of Apply to, then click the OK button.
Does your document contain a lot of sensitive information that you only want certain people to be able to read? Learn how to password protect a document in Word 2013 so that anyone that wants to read the document will need to know the password that you create.
Disclaimer: Most of the pages on the internet include affiliate links, including some on this site.