How to Change Measurement Units from Inches to Centimetres in Microsoft Word

When formatting academic essays, thesis dissertations, legal briefs, or corporate templates in Microsoft Word, layout guidelines frequently stipulate margin widths, tab stops, and indentations in specific measurement units. While United States editions of Word default to inches, international standards and Commonwealth institutions commonly require centimetres or millimetres.

Rather than manually performing mental conversions or calculating fractional decimals, you can globally reconfigure Microsoft Word to display your preferred measurement system across all rulers, dialogue boxes, and table layout properties.

Changing Measurement Units on Windows

To switch units in Word for Windows:

1. Open Microsoft Word and click File in the top-left corner.
2. Select Options at the bottom of the backstage navigation menu to launch the Word Options dialogue.
3. Click Advanced on the left-hand menu.
4. Scroll down to the Display section.
5. Locate the setting labelled Show measurements in units of:.
6. Click the drop-down menu and choose Centimetres (or Inches, Millimetres, Points, or Picas).
7. Click OK to confirm your selection.

Word instantly updates the horizontal and vertical rulers, the Page Setup margin inputs, paragraph indentation dialogues, and table cell dimension tools to reflect your chosen unit.

Changing Measurement Units on Mac

If you are running Microsoft Word on macOS:

1. Click Word in the Apple menu bar at the top of your screen.
2. Select Preferences… (Cmd + ,).
3. Under the Authoring and Proofing Tools heading, click General.
4. Locate the Show measurements in units of: drop-down menu.
5. Select Centimeters.
6. Close the Preferences dialogue box.

Overriding Units on the Fly Without Changing Settings

If you only need to apply a single centimetre margin while keeping your default ruler in inches (or vice versa), Word accepts manual unit suffixes directly inside input boxes. For example, in the Page Setup > Margins dialogue, simply type 2.54 cm or 1 in or 72 pt directly into the text field. Word will automatically calculate and convert the figure into your configured system unit upon clicking OK.