How To Change Indent Measurements from Inches to cm in Microsoft Word

Jamie Read more June 7, 2021

Microsoft Office products have always allowed a certain amount of customization. Themes, colors, measurement units, signatures and all kinds of personalization’s are possible within its various products. If you want to know how to change indent measurements from inches to cm in Word among other customizations, this tutorial is for you.

How To Change Indent Measurements from Inches to cm in Microsoft Word

First I’ll cover the headline feature, changing indent measurements from inches to and then I’ll cover a few other customizations you can make in the Microsoft text editor.

Change indent measurements from inches to cm in Word

You can change measurement units in Word to centimeters, picas, points or millimeters depending on your needs. You can modify this manually per document or switch permanently from imperial to metric. I’ll show you both.

To change a single set of indents:

Open Word on the document you want to use the metric measurement with.
Select the small gray box and arrow icon in the bottom right of the Paragraph ribbon box. This should bring up the Paragraph popup.
Add your metric measurements in the Indentation line. Manually add ‘cm’ to the end of each to Word knows the unit you want to use.
Select OK to save.

This setting is temporary and will not permanently change the unit of measurement for Word. That is done within the Options panel.

Select File and Options.
Select Advanced from the left menu in the Options window.
Scroll to Display and find ‘Show measurement in units of:
Change from Inches to Centimeters.
Select OK to save.

If you want to change your units of measurement across the board, you can do that through Windows Control Panel. Select Region and the Change Date, Time or Number Formats tab. Select Additional settings and select Metric from the Measurement system list. Select OK to save.

Add your own tabs to the Ribbon in Word

The Ribbon was a controversial addition to Microsoft Office but the ability to tweak it just how you like it softened the blow a bit. You can add your own tabs to make it more how you like it.

Select File in Word.
Select Options and then Customize Ribbon.
Select New Tab and give it a name.
Add new features to it from the left pane by double clicking or selecting Add in the center.

You can also add new features to existing tabs by highlighting a feature in the left or right pane. The left shows features you can add while the right shows those you can remove. Double click each feature or use Add or Remove in the center.

Change the color theme of Word

Don’t get too excited about this, there are only a couple of colors to choose from but the default gray is a bit dull. At the moment, you only have Colorful, Dark Gray and White. None of them are particularly good but Colorful is by far the easiest to live with.

Select File in Word and then Options.
Select General in the left menu.
Find Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office and change Office Theme.
Select OK to save.

Of all of the features that keep being added to Office, the ability to use your Windows theme or at least a few more options would be most welcome!

Change keyboard shortcuts in Word

Most of us know the basic keyboard shortcuts for most Windows apps, Ctrl + C, V X or Z and so on. Did you know you can change most of the shortcuts in Word if you want to?

Open Word and select File.
Select Options and Customize Ribbon.
Select the Customize button at the bottom under Keyboard Shortcuts.
Make your change in the window then select Assign.
Select OK to save.

This is useful if you use a less popular command that doesn’t have a simple shortcut.

View documents side by side in Word

When editing or proofing, it’s often useful to view two documents side by side for comparison. Word does not have a compare tool so you have to perform these edits manually. Having them side by side on your screen makes this much easier.

Select View in Word and New Window.
Select Arrange All or View Side by Side from the ribbon or manually move the windows to suit.
Select Restore once finished to go back to the standard layout.

New Window creates another instance of the document you’re looking at. If you’re editing or proofing, you can save them separately or close the original without saving while keeping the edited window open. It is a useful feature that falls short of compare but gets the job done.