Setting up a document in Microsoft Word can be tricky if you have specific formatting requirements that you need to meet.
These requirements may include things like a certain word count, font, font size, and they might include a certain type of spacing.
One of the more common spacing options is double spacing, and it’s something that you can apply to a document that you are editing in Microsoft Word.
Our guide below will show you how to apply double spacing in Microsoft Word to a document that already has content.
How to Make Something Double Spaced on Word for Office 365
- Select the document text.
- Click the Home tab.
- Click the Line and Paragraph Spacing button.
- Choose 2.0.
Our guide continues below with more information on using double spacing for your Microsoft Word document, including pictures of these steps.
Find out how to create a Microsoft Word template using one of your existing Word documents.
How to Apply Double Spacing in Microsoft Word (Guide with Pictures)
The steps in this article were performed in the Microsoft Word for Office 365 version of the application. However, these steps will also work in many other versions of Word.
Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft Word.
Step 2: Click anywhere inside the document body, then press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select the whole document.
(You can skip this step if you are working with a new, blank document.)
Step 3: Choose the Home tab at the top of the window.
Step 4: Click the Line and Paragraph Spacing button in the Paragraph section of the ribbon.
Step 5: Click the 2.0 option from the dropdown menu.
Our tutorial continues below with additional discussion about changing line spacing options in Microsoft Word.
You can find out more about changing formatting options in Word documents with our Word 365 change default font guide.
How to Double Space in Word Online
If you are editing a document in the online version of Microsoft Word, then the steps above won’t help you to double space your document.
The user interface in the Web browser version of Word is a bit different, but you still have the option to change the spacing between lines.
Step 1: Sign in to Word Online and open the document that you want to double space.
Step 2: Select any existing text to which you want to apply the double spaced formatting.
Step 3: Click the Home tab at the top left corner of the window.
Step 4: Click the three dots at the far right end of the ribbon.
Step 5: Choose the Line Spacing option, then click the 2.0 option from the drop down list.
You can continue reading below for more on making double spaced Word documents.
More Information on How to Add Microsoft Word Double Spacing
You can also select the Line Spacing Options item from that dropdown menu if you would like control over other document spacing options, such as the indentation and the spacing before and after a paragraph.
If your document is double spaced and you need to make it single spaced, then steps are very similar. You just need to select the text in the document (clicking inside the document and pressing the Ctrl + A keyboard shortcut will highlight the entire document) click the Home tab, click the Line Spacing button, then choose the 1.0 option.
If you are always changing the line spacing when you open a Word document, then you might have more luck if you change the default line spacing option. You can do this if you select Line Spacing Options at the bottom of the list where you found the 2.0 line spacing option. This opens a new line spacing box.
There you can click the Line spacing dropdown, select “Double” from the drop down menu to set double spaced lines in the document, then click the Set as Default button at the bottom of the Paragraph dialog box.
You can then click the option for making this line spacing the default for just the current document, ot you can click the circle to the left of All documents based on the Normal template to change line spacing for all future documents that you create.
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