Nothing is more frustrating than finishing a lengthy essay, report, or resume in Microsoft Word, only to discover that the very last two sentences of your document have annoyingly spilled over onto a brand new, mostly blank page. Instead of manually highlighting your text, reducing the font size by half a point, and adjusting margins to force everything to fit, you can use Word’s hidden “Shrink One Page” feature to do the math for you automatically.
What Does the Feature Do?
When activated, the Shrink One Page tool instantly analyzes your entire document. It then mathematically reduces the font size of every piece of text and slightly tightens the spacing just enough to pull that stubborn final paragraph back up onto the preceding page, eliminating the blank trailing page entirely.
How to Find and Use the Tool
Because this feature is rarely used by the general public, Microsoft actually removed it from the default ribbon menu years ago. You have to manually add it back to your Quick Access Toolbar before you can click it.
- Open your Microsoft Word document that has the spill-over issue.
- Look at the very top-left corner of your screen, above the main ribbon (where the Save icon is located). Click the small downward-facing arrow to customize the Quick Access Toolbar.
- From the dropdown menu, select More Commands.
- A large Word Options dialogue box will open. At the top left, change the “Choose commands from” dropdown menu from “Popular Commands” to All Commands.
- Scroll down the massive alphabetical list until you find the command labeled Shrink One Page. Click on it to highlight it.
- Click the Add >> button in the center to move it over to your active toolbar list.
- Click OK at the bottom right.
You will now see a new icon at the top left of your screen that looks like a sheet of paper with an arrow pointing upward. Click that button. Word will instantly recalculate your entire document and seamlessly pull your text upward, securing your perfect page count.