Mac Forum / Applications / Word / January 2007

New documents or existing documents?

For new default documents, you should be able to open up the Normal
template, set the Zoom, hit the spacebar then backspace to "dirty"
Normal so that Word knows it needs to save something but no text is
entered, save and close Normal.  I've not tested this with Page Width,
but it works with other Zoom settings.

For existing documents, you'll need to use an AutoOpen macro, which will
run on every document you open, including those sent from other people,
but not newly created documents:

I *think* this is the code you would need (haven't tested it specifically):

   ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Zoom.PageFit = wdPageFitBestFit

To install, see here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/InstallMacro.html

Be sure to name the macro AutoOpen.

I suggest you make a duplicate of your Normal template before
experimenting (it should be at ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal).  
Then if anything goes wrong, you can trash the Normal template and bring
back your previous one.

Daiya

What Daiya said. Even better, and in addition, record a macro to set
the current doc to page width view and assign a keystroke combo to it.

That way, if you need to snap into normal or outline view using the
built-in short cuts, you can swiftly leap back into the one true view
when sanity returns. ;-)

It is also a useful work-around for cleaning up the messes that track
changes can leave.