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If I set a document zoom to 100%, the displayed sheet of paper has a different size from the physical sheet.
What is the 100% I am seeing on screen?

(And is it possible to make the 100% zoom show the real paper size?)

Details:
(added on 2023-07-20)

I will show you samples of the following paper size setting and the physical sheet of A4 paper

Word menu > Layout > Size > A4

on three monitors with 100 % scale each

Settings > Display > (for each monitor) > Scale > 100%

which do appear like this – display panels photographed against a physical A4 sheet (red double arrow) and photos lined up:
(click the image to zoom)

Showing physical 210 mm in 100% zoom on 3 monitors

As you can see, the same 210 mm in 100% zoom setting is represented by seemingly random lengths on actual monitors. (Word window was just moved between them and photographed.)

Hence the question stands: What is 100% zoom in Microsoft Word, which appears to be a random size in physical reality?

  • Monitor 1: 27" (2560 × 1440), Monitor 2: 27" (1920 × 1080), Monitor 3: 14" (1920 × 1080)
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5 Answers 5

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Due to historical reasons, 100% scaling is assumed to be 96 pixels per inch (PPI). This is just an arbitrary value that is “close enough” for most monitors, even back in the CRT days. Word just works with that assumption.

However, none of your monitors has 96 PPI!

Monitor Resolution Diagonal PPI
1 2560×1440 27″ 108.79
2 1920×1080 27″ 81.59
3 1920×1080 14″ 157.35

So whatever Word thinks is 21 cm in the real world will be off!

Monitor vs 96 PPI “virtual” 210 mm will be
1 113.32% 185.31 mm
2 84.99% 247.09 mm
3 163.91% 128.12 mm

Off, but not random at all.

With the advent of “Retina” displays, 96 PPI is no longer “close enough”, so we have display scaling now. Unfortunately, fractional scaling can cause quite some graphical issues, so it is not something I’d recommend using. 125%, 150% or 175% as offered by Windows are just not good. Factors like 200%, 300% and so on give the best result, even on software that does not natively scale.

There’s something else: Monitors do actually report their physical size most of the time, as part of the Extended Display Identification Data (EDID). Software can access this information and could use it accurately depict physical size. Word obviously does not, and this is not something you can change.

But what you can do is use the “vs 96 PPI” percentages above as a zoom level in Word to get a more accurate real-world size.

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  • This is now clear and as a matter of verification, the zoom levels (in the second column of the second table) deliver expected sizes against the real-world sheet of paper. Even the path to a software solution is understandable and someone who needs to really automate this can write a Word plugin to deliver real-world-based zoom.
    – miroxlav
    Jul 20, 2023 at 20:50
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The 100% displayed size is relative to a typical monitor size that was used for reference. Depending on the settings selected, there can be a little slider box in the lower right corner to adust the view size, default being 100%; but on other screen sizes than the standard screen example that the 100% is based on, the view size won't be actual size when one measures it, and in fact often one won't be able to adjust the slider so that it exactly is. But, by using a ruler, or simply holding up a sheet of eg A4 paper to the screen, one can adjust the slider so that the view onscreen is fairly close to actual: which can be very useful for estimating font readability, margins, line spacing, etc. Its sort of like the slider size adjustments for rtf or paint file viewing.

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    +1 for the obvious empiricism. Check it against a real sheet of paper. Done ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 3, 2020 at 7:17
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    @Tetsujin – no... I have done this many times :) But the problem is that if you find out that the actual size is 114%, you have to keep the zoom there... if you zoom freely in and out then you have to manually return to 114% in Zoom dialog box again and again. This denies the special button 100% and its label which was put there as an indication of real size. Empirical 114% = 100% looks like 'problem solved', but it is far from usable. If the built-in concept of 100% does not work, why it is there? Or: how to make it work properly on a specific computer?
    – miroxlav
    Jul 4, 2020 at 14:22
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    The 100% reference point remains constant, so on machines having monitors other than the decided upon typical/standard dimensions, the 100% reference point will continue to be associated with whatever the actual onscreen size is for a particular monitor. Manually allowing for actual size difference when at the reference point may be tedious, but the size adjustment to yield true size remains consistent for a particular monitor. Some users use the program on fairly small screens,And some on more than one monitor at a time where the multiple monitors may be of more than one size.
    – M H
    Jul 4, 2020 at 16:01
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    100% will be a pixel count, which takes no account of your screen's pixel density, nor in all probability any variance in your Windows' general screen 'zoom' setting. If you come out at 114% then that's what you need for wysiwyg. There's no way round that, other than changing your screen's apparent pixel density. Score minus one to Microsoft for making their desktop drawing system so arbitrary.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 4, 2020 at 16:08
  • @Tetsujin – I updated the question. Maybe you can elaborate your idea in a separate answer since no-one was able to answer this satisfactorily at the time of writing of the comment.
    – miroxlav
    Jul 20, 2023 at 14:32
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When you set the zoom to 100%, Word attempts to display the page exactly as the printed sheet would be.

You can see this take effect if you change to a different paper size. You can also see the measurements Word is applying if you display the ruler.

enter image description here

In practice, owing to the vagaries of printer drivers and monitor/display drivers, the displayed page size is approximate, but other than slight discrepancies of this kind, 100% means "actual size as it will be when printed".

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    Honestly I do not understand this answer. Physical measurements are in no way close to 100% zoom, the size difference is about 15%. And therefore also the sentence 100% means "actual size as it will be when printed". makes no sense to me.
    – miroxlav
    Jul 2, 2020 at 23:21
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    If you're experiencing something different from this, maybe you can add screenshots to your question to let folks know what it is you're seeing?
    – Reg Edit
    Jul 2, 2020 at 23:40
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The size you see on your monitor depends on DPI.

As Windows isn't aware of DPI it can't consider it, so neither any software has the chance to display "real size"

The most you can do is to adjust zoom to fit real size - as already suggested in previous answers.

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  • You wrote: As Windows isn't aware of DPI... – and this was the second part of the question in the last paragraph. Can be word or Windows 'calibrated', i.e. made aware of DPI (by monitor drivers or other settings) so it can get sense of what 100% has to be? Therefore if I simply press 100% zoom button on the ribbon, I would get what the button says... 1:1 display. Having 100% zoom without possibility of calibration may look like an unfinished design of the product.
    – miroxlav
    Jul 4, 2020 at 14:27
  • You might play around with custom scaling at OS level, although I'm not sure it'll be perfect (windowscentral.com/…). Jul 4, 2020 at 14:43
  • Thank you for the effort. Now the accepted answer connects all the dots together.
    – miroxlav
    Jul 20, 2023 at 21:04
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The size of Word display on our computer depends on many factors, such as resolution. If we set the resolution to 128*1024, the page will be about the same size as A4 paper.

When the display scale is set to 100%, the higher screen resolution, the smaller page shown.

The actual print size is rendered according to the size defined by the paper.

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