How to Print Double-Sided in Microsoft Word

Saving Paper, Saving Money

If you regularly print long documents—such as university essays, legal contracts, or manuscript drafts—printing on only one side of the paper is incredibly wasteful. Not only does it burn through expensive reams of printer paper twice as fast, but it also creates thick, heavy documents that are difficult to staple and annoying to carry around.

Printing on both sides of the page (officially known in the printing industry as “duplex printing”) solves all of these problems simultaneously.

However, getting Microsoft Word to actually print double-sided can sometimes feel like a lottery. Depending on the specific model of printer sitting on your desk, the process is either completely automatic or requires a surprisingly specific manual workflow to prevent half your document from being printed upside down.

Does Your Printer Support Automatic Duplex Printing?

Before you begin, you need to know what your hardware is capable of. Most modern office printers and high-end home inkjet printers support automatic duplexing. This means the printer has a mechanical mechanism inside that physically flips the piece of paper over and pulls it back through the ink rollers to print the second side.

Cheaper, entry-level home printers usually lack this mechanism. To print double-sided on these cheaper machines, you must use manual duplexing, which involves printing all the odd-numbered pages first, physically taking that stack of paper out of the output tray, flipping it over by hand, placing it back into the input tray, and then printing all the even-numbered pages.

Microsoft Word handles both methods, but you need to select the correct one.

How to Print Double-Sided (If Your Printer Supports It)

If you know your printer can flip the pages automatically, the process is incredibly fast.

1. Open your document in Microsoft Word.
2. Click on File in the top left corner of the ribbon.
3. Click on Print in the left-hand menu. (Alternatively, press Ctrl+P on Windows or Cmd+P on Mac).
4. Look at the main print settings window. You will see a dropdown menu that usually defaults to “Print One Sided.”
5. Click that dropdown menu and select Print on Both Sides.
6. Click the large Print button at the top of the window.

The printer will now take over and do all the hard work mechanically.

Flipping on the Long Edge vs Short Edge

When you select “Print on Both Sides,” you will often see two sub-options: Flip pages on long edge and Flip pages on short edge. This dictates how the text is oriented on the back of the page.

• Flip on long edge (Standard): Choose this if you are printing a standard portrait document (like a letter) that you plan to bind or staple on the left side, exactly like a traditional book. The text on the back page will read the same way up as the front page when turned like a book page.
• Flip on short edge (Notepad style): Choose this if you want to bind the document at the top (like a legal notepad or a calendar). If you choose this setting on a standard document, the text on the back of the page will appear upside down until you physically flip the paper vertically.

How to Manually Print Double-Sided (For Basic Printers)

If you select the dropdown menu and the “Print on Both Sides” option is completely missing, it means Microsoft Word has detected that your printer lacks the mechanical hardware to flip the paper automatically. You will need to do it yourself.

1. Go to File > Print.
2. Click the “Print One Sided” dropdown menu.
3. Select Manually Print on Both Sides.
4. Click Print.

Microsoft Word will immediately print only the odd-numbered pages of your document (Page 1, 3, 5, etc.).

Once the printer stops, a dialogue box will pop up on your computer screen giving you instructions. Do not click OK yet.

Take the printed stack of paper from the output tray. You now need to flip the entire stack over and place it back into the printer’s input tray. The exact way you need to flip the paper (whether you turn it face down, or rotate it 180 degrees) depends entirely on your specific printer model. Most printers have a small icon embossed on the plastic near the paper tray indicating how to load pre-printed paper.

Once the paper is re-loaded, look back at your computer screen and click OK. The printer will pull the paper back through and print the even-numbered pages perfectly on the blank reverse sides.